VEST  I 

POCKET 

ESSAYS 

GEORGE  FITCH 


807.73  Fitch,  George 

P552v     Vest  pocket  essays 


L'SRARY  CF  T!  '.c 
WALT  DISNEY  STUDIO 


GAG  FILE 


VEST  POCKET   ESSAYS 


VEST  POCKET  ESSAYS 


GEORGE  FITCH 

Author  of  "At  Good  Old  Siwash,"  etc. 


A  bed  of  old  Earth's  salt,  too  toon  dissolved, 
and  never  to  be  replaced. 

B.  L.   T. 


NEW  YORK 

BARSE  &  HOPKINS 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1916,  by 
Barse  &  Hopkins 


TO  THE  SMILE  KING 

"He  came  and  laughed  and  went  his  way; 
Lending   something   to   the   day 

That  flashed  as  with  a  mystic  light — 
Something  wise  and  kind  and  gay. 
So  when  he  went  into  the  night 
Out  beyond  our  mortal  sight, 
Lo!   he  left  us  with  his  clay 
God's  joy  flashing  from  the  height." 

— WILLIAM  ALLEN  WHITE. 

"His  mind  was  pure,  his  thoughts  were  clean, 

He  knew  mankind  and  life; 
With  smiles  he  forced  the  problems  of 
The  Everlasting  strife." 

"They  say  he's  dead.    It  is  not  true. 

I  can  believe  that  never. 
A  soul  like  his  could  never  die, 
George  Fitch  will  live  forever." 

— ROT  K.  MOOT/TON. 

The  quiet,  modest,  kindly  Smile  King  has  gone.  And  yet  the 
Smile  King  is  here.  This  little  volume  will  tell  you  so.  And  you 
will  believe  it.  All  too  soon  he  went — but  he  lived  a  LIFE. 

For  four  years  he  daily  fed  his  clean,  non-stinging  Smile  Essays 
to  a  great  nation  of  humans,  through  the  daily  newspapers,  whose 
readers  read  and  laughed  and  loved.  And  through  this  little  book 
let  us  hope  that  millions  will  again  read  and  laugh  and  love. 

George  Fitch  was  one  of  the  rarest  friends  I  ever  had  or  ever 
hope  to  have.  He  was  fine  and  strong  and  just.  And  the  silent 
Influence  that  his  big  heart  radiated  can  never  grow  less  bright 
nor  less  beautiful. 

Like  the  never  ending  Seasons  his  good  works  are  sure  to  come 
into  newness  year  in  and  year  out,  until  that  time  shall  come  when 
there  shall  be  no  more  Seasons — just  one  long,  never  ending,  beau- 
tiful Day. 

— GEOBGE  MATTHEW  ADAMS. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I    STUDIES  IN  ANATOMY 

NOSES 15 

EARS 17 

FEET 10 

HAIR 21 

MOUTHS 23 

II    NATURAL  HISTORY 

THE  HEN 27 

THE  MOUSE 29 

THE  CATERPILLAR 31 

THE  BOA  CONSTRICTOR 33 

THE  MOSQUITO 35 

THE  FLY 37 

THE  PEACOCK 39 

THE  DEER 41 

III    THE  CHANGING  SEASONS 

JANUARY 45 

FEBRUARY 47 

THE  29TH  OF  FEBRUARY 49 

MARCH 51 

APRIL 53 

MAY 55 

JUNE 57 

JULY 59 

AUGUST 61 

SEPTEMBER  63 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

OCTOBER 65 

NOVEMBER 67 

DECEMBER 69 

IV    AMERICAN  INSTITUTIONS 

CORRESPONDENCE  SCHOOLS 73 

PATRIOTISM 75 

HONESTY 77 

NEUTRALITY 79 

PRIDE 81 

PULLS 83 

HOSPITALITY 85 

THE  BANANA 87 

MUD '.     .     .  89 

CHATAUQUAS .  91 

V    AMERICAN  INVENTIONS 

FLATS 95 

MOVING  PICTURES 97 

THE  TIN  CAN 99 

WASH  DAY .  101 

BRASS  BANDS 103 

CLOSETS 105 

MATCHES 107 

FIRELESS  COOKERS 109 

VI    AMERICANS  USEFUL— AND  OTHERWISE 

LAWYERS 113 

MILLIONAIRES 115 

FARMERS 117 

DOCTORS 119 

DIRECTORS 121 

FINANCIERS .     .  123 

BOOKKEEPERS  ..  125 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

DEMAGOGUES 127 

EMIGRANTS 129 

PROMOTERS 131 

COMMITTEES 133 

VII    IN  SOCIETY 

DIAMONDS 137 

HATS 139 

CANES 141 

COLLARS 143 

NECKTIES 145 

THE  DOLLAR 147 

MENUS 149 

SOCIETY 151 

VIII    SAFETY  VALVES 

FRESH  AIR 155 

GOLF  BALLS 157 

CIGARETTES 159 

MOTOR  BOATS 161 

FISHING 163 

VACATION 165 

PICNICS 167 

FUN 169 

PROFANITY 171 

IX    MORE  OR  LESS  BUNK 

PROMISES 175 

LOVE 177 

SUPERSTITION 179 

ELOQUENCE 181 

LUCK 183 

HYPOCRISY 185 

CABBAGES 187 

KINGS  .  .  189 


STUDIES  IN  ANATOMY 


NOSES 

THE  nose  is  the  most  prominent  human  fea- 
ture. It  stands  boldly  out  from  the  mid- 
dle of  the  face  like  the  prow  of  a  battle- 
ship, and  while  it  is  not  handsome  in  itself,  we 
have  become  so  accustomed  to  it  that  a  man  with- 
out a  nose  attracts  m'ore  attention  than  an  actor 
with  a  haircut. 

The  nose  is  used  to  strain  dust,  dirt,  cinders  and 
microbes  out  of  the  air  before  it  is  taken  into  the 
lungs  and  also  to  extract  the  odors  from  said  air 
and  submit  samples  of  them  to  the  brain  for  in- 
spection. Owing  to  this  last  duty,  it  is  more  en- 
joyable to  have  noses  in  some  localities  than  it  is 
in  others.  In  the  orange  groves  of  California,  a 
nose  is  a  great  source  of  pleasure,  but  on  a  trip 
through  the  stock  yards  of  Chicago,  it  is  a  nui- 
sance. Like  the  ear,  the  nose  should  be  fitted  with 
check  valves,  so  that  it  could  be  thrown  out  of  gear 
when  not  desirable. 

Noses  vary  greatly  in  architecture.  Among 
the  most  prominent  varieties  is  the  Roman  nose, 
which  is  a  stern,  uncompromising  beak  shaped 
like  a  ship's  rudder.  The  "pug"  or  retrousse 
nose  is  also  firmly  fastened  on  a  great  many  peo- 
ple, who  would  never  think  of  specifying  it  in  an 

15 


NOSES 

order.  It  is  a  small  nose  which  creeps  down  un- 
ostentatiously from  the  forehead,  and  leaps  joy- 
fully upward  at  the  southern  terminus,  giving  the 
owner  a  pert  and  saucy  expression,  which  may  not 
coincide  with  his  disposition  worth  a  cent.  The 
Grecian  nose  is  noted  for  its  beautiful  straight 
lines  and  classic  design,  but  it  must  be  noted  that 
men  with  Grecian  noses  do  not  run  for  office  any 
faster  than  men  with  nondescript  wind  splitters. 
There  are  also  flat,  spreading  noses,  weird,  wan- 
dering noses  and  large,  meaty  probosci.  Nature 
is  very  careless,  both  in  designing  and  affixing 
noses,  and  has  managed  to  get  about  90  per  cent  of 
them  on  crooked.  Moreover,  many  noses  have  de- 
fective flues  and  are  badly  plumbed,  causing  great 
distress  and  grief  to  their  owners. 

Because  the  nose  always  precedes  the  human 
face  into  trouble,  it  is  usually  a  great  sufferer  in 
combat.  It  is  a  very  poor  weapon  of  offense,  yet 
reckless  owners  are  continually  trying  to  knock 
opponents  down,  by  hitting  them  on  the  fists  with 
their  noses. 

Noses  usually  come  in  two  colors,  red  and  white. 
The  latter  are  much  more  highly  esteemed,  though 
men  will  often  spend  years  of  time  and  a  great 
deal  of  money  in  coloring  a  nose  until  it  gleams 
like  a  red  signal  beacon  in  the  darkness.  It  is 
generally  conceded,  however,  that  while  on  the 
whole  the  effect  produced  is  weird  and  picturesque, 
it  is  not  worth  the  trouble  and  expense. 

16 


EARS 

EARS  are  weirdly  constructed  projections 
on  the  side  of  the  head,  designed  to  catch 
floating  sounds  of  all  kinds  and  herd  them 
into  the  hearing  mechanism  within,  where  they 
are  manufactured  into  information,  ideas,  suspi- 
cions, wrath,  ecstasy,  political  beliefs  and  other 
well  known  products. 

Ears  are  very  crudely  designed  and  have  not 
improved  from  year  to  year  like  automobiles.  It 
is  impossible  to  furl  up  an  ear  and  keep  out  un- 
desirable sounds.  A  man  need  only  see  what  he 
chooses  but  he  has  no  lids  on  his  ears  and  must 
go  through  the  world  hearing  vast  quantities  of 
things  which  are  of  no  use  to  him.  If  ears  were 
only  fitted  with  puckering  strings,  many  a  nervous 
man  would  sleep  soundly  through  the  uproar  made 
by  falling  leaves,  and  fathers  would  not  be  so  fatal 
to  earnest  young  men  with  deep  reverberating 
voices,  who  come  to  sit  on  their  front  porches  and 
talk  with  their  daughters  at  night. 

Among  man's  greatest  curses,  in  fact,  are  the 
superfluous  things  which  he  hears.  If  a  man 
could  only  lock  up  his  ears  and  throw  the  key  down 
the  well  whenever  a  get-rich-quick  promoter  hove 
in  sight  he  would  be  greatly  blessed  by  nature, 
while  the  ability  to  explain  to  a  father  whose  baby 

17 


EARS 

has  just  thought  up  a  new  epigram,  that  the  time 
lock  on  his  ears  would  not  go  off  for  another  hour 
would  brighten  many  a  man's  life  considerably. 

Ears  are  considered  ornamental  and  are  made 
in  a  great  variety  of  sizes  and  designs.  Some  ears 
stand  out  straight  from  the  head  like  studding 
sails,  making  navigation  in  a  high  wind  difficult 
for  their  owners,  while  others  are  movable  and 
can  be  flapped  back  and  forth  successfully,  though 
not  with  any  great  benefit.  It  is  maintained  by 
scientists  that  prehistoric  man  was  able  to  flap  his 
ears  vigorously,  but  even  this  fact  does  not  make 
us  sorry  that  we  live  in  an  enlightened  age. 

Ears  can  take  care  of  themselves  in  summer  but 
are  a  great  nuisance  in  winter  owing  to  the  eager- 
ness with  which  they  freeze  up.  A  water  pipe  is 
warm  blooded  compared  with  an  ear.  When  an 
ear  freezes  it  cannot  be  thawed  out  with  a  blow- 
pipe but  must  be  rubbed  with  snow  after  which 
it  becomes  vast  and  red  and  bulbous  and  painful. 
An  ear  which  could  be  filled  with  an  anti-freeze 
compound  in  winter,  like  an  automobile  radiator, 
would  become  instantly  popular  and  the  demand 
for  it  would  be  enormous.  Women's  ears  do  not 
freeze  as  easily  as  those  of  men,  possibly  because 
women  generally  keep  their  ears  busy. 

Even  the  present  crude  variety  of  ear  can  be 
protected  from  frost  by  stuffing  it  carefully  into 
a  velvet  case  called  an  earmuff.  But  most  people 
consider  the  preventative  worse  than  the  cure. 

18 


FEET 

FEET  are  the  terminals  of  the  human  sys- 
tem, and  cause  about  as  much  trouble  to 
their  owners,  as  any  other  kind  of  trans- 
portation terminals. 

Feet  were  made  by  turning  up  the  lower  end  of 
the  human  frame,  thus  enabling  man  to  stand 
without  a  prop  after  he  has  discovered  the  knack. 
They  consist  of  a  heel,  an  instep  and  five  toes, 
most  of  which  are  perpetually  insurging  against 
the  administration.  A  foot  is  harder  to  keep 
happy  and  contented  with  its  surroundings  than  a 
girl  who  has  just  returned  from  college,  full  of 
higher  education. 

Moreover,  very  few  toes  get  along  well  together. 
They  have  no  esprit  de  corps,  so  to  speak.  There 
is  continual  friction  between  them,  and  this  leads 
to  so  much  bad  feeling  and  so  many  sore  spots, 
that  many  a  tortured  proprietor  of  ten  belligerent 
toes  has  looked  with  sad  envy  on  a  wooden-legged 
friend.  Until  some  international  court  of  arbitra- 
tion is  formed  to  settle  the  claims  of  rival  toes, 
which  insist  on  occupying  the  same  place  at  the 
same  time,  man  cannot  hope  for  complete  peace 
and  happiness. 

Feet  are  very  retiring,  seldom  appearing  in  pub- 
lic. They  live  in  shoes,  boots  and  slippers.  This 

19 


FEET 

is  one  of  the  great  sources  of  indignation  among 
feet.  The  man  who  will  spend  three  days  in  hav- 
ing his  shoulders  fitted  perfectly  to  a  new  coat, 
will  leave  the  job  of  fitting  his  feet  with  shoes  to 
a  machine  in  Lynn,  Mass.,  which  has  never  seen 
them  and  has  no  interest  in  them  whatever. 

Until  the  invention  of  the  bicycle,  the  automo- 
bile, the  street  car,  and  the  elevator,  feet  were  used 
extensively  for  walking.  Now,  however,  they  are 
more  or  less  superfluous.  A  great  many  men 
leave  them  on  their  desks  all  day  and  on  the  man- 
telpiece most  of  the  evening. 

Owing  to  their  great  distance  from  the  central 
heating  station,  it  is  very  difficult  to  keep  feet 
properly  heated  in  cold  weather.  Frigid  feet  are 
one  of  the  curses  of  mankind.  They  are  not  only 
painful,  but  have  a  sad  effect  upon  the  brain.  If 
it  had  not  been  for  a  national  attack  of  cold  feet, 
which  swept  over  this  country  more  than  half  a 
century  ago,  the  boundaries  of  the  United  States 
would  now  extend  almost  to  Hudson's  Bay. 

Feet  come  in  sizes  varying  from  Number  1  on 
a  double  A  last,  to  Number  19,  standard  gauge. 
Small  feet  are  generally  preferred,  though  they 
are  not  so  useful.  In  China  they  are  so  greatly 
esteemed,  that  Chinese  women  wear  their  corsets 
on  their  feet.  There  has  been  much  unprofitable 
discussion  as  to  where  the  largest  feet  can  be 
found,  but  it  can  be  safely  said  that  as  a  rule,  they 
belong  to  the  most  truthful  women. 

20 


HAIR  is  a  material  used  by  the  Great 
Architect  to  thatch  the  human  dome  of 
thought.  It  comes  late  and  leaves  early, 
like  a  fashionable  guest,  and  does  no  work  while 
it  remains.  Nevertheless,  it  is  greatly  beloved, 
and  there  is  no  sadder  sight  than  that  of  a  man 
of  fifty  bidding  good-by  to  his  hair. 

Women  wear  their  hair  as  long  as  possible,  and 
do  it  up  in  a  great  variety  of  rolls,  coils,  loops, 
braids,  puffs,  waves,  waterfalls,  explosions,  cas- 
cades, turrets,  colonnades,  wings,  apses,  and  flying 
buttresses.  Men  also  wear  their  hair  as  long  as 
possible,  which  accounts  for  the  great  prosperity 
of  hair  tonic  manufacturers. 

Hair  comes  in  a  great  many  colors,  including 
black,  brown,  yellow,  gray,  auburn,  Titian,  blonde 
and  bronze.  Some  very  frank  people  also  have 
red  hair.  Red  hair  is  noted  because  of  the  prom- 
inence with  which  it  stands  out  on  the  landscape, 
and  the  inflammability  which  it  is  supposed  to  im- 
part to  the  disposition.  Red-haired  men  are 
usually  good  fighters,  but  this  is  because  they  had 
plenty  of  practice  in  their  youth. 

Hair  is  affixed  to  the  scalp  in  a  careless  and  in- 
effectual manner,  particularly  in  the  case  of  man, 

21 


HAIR 

and  after  adhering  to  its  owner  for  a  few  decades, 
it  usually  begins  to  lose  its  grip.  This  causes 
baldness,  which  is  sadly  alluded  to  as  a  sign  of  wis- 
dom by  a  great  many  men,  whose  foreheads  sweep 
majestically  back  to  their  collars.  As  a  rule,  the 
hair  retreats  in  an  orderly  and  dignified  manner, 
but  occasionally  it  plays  a  dastardly  trick  by  re- 
tiring from  the  sides,  leaving  a  small  and  lonesome 
oasis  of  hair  in  the  middle  of  a  vast  and  shining 
desert. 

Hair  is  reduced  to  order  by  the  use  of  a  brush 
and  a  comb,  by  means  of  which  a  neat  furrow, 
called  a  "part,"  can  be  made.  Formerly  the  hair 
was  parted  in  the  middle,  like  the  Republican 
party,  but  men  whose  heads  are  heavy  enough  to 
retain  their  balance  under  the  strain,  now  wear 
the  part  on  one  side.  Hair  is  harvested  once  a 
month  by  a  barber,  who  will  also  wash,  singe,  mas- 
sage, oil,  grease,  and  electrify  it  unless  the  owner 
watches  him  carefully.  In  its  old  age,  hair  be- 
comes white  and  beautiful.  It  is  also  supposed  to 
turn  white  under  the  influence  of  great  fright,  but 
if  this  were  true*  the  successive  Roosevelt  booms 
would  have  made  Wall  Street  look  like  a  vast 
snowdrift. 


22 


MOUTHS 


f  flHE  mouth  is  the  port  of  entry  for  the  hu- 
man system,  and  also  its  organ  of  public- 

M  ity.  Through  the  mouth  we  take  in  food 
and  water  for  another  hard  day's  talking,  and 
through  the  mouth  we  also  issue  interviews,  prom- 
ises, explanations,  boasts,  excuses,  apologies,  ap- 
peals, denials,  retorts,  courteous  and  fighting 
words. 

The  mouth  is  connected  with  the  alimentary 
canal  by  the  esophagus  and  with  the  brain  by  some 
mysterious  wireless  telegraph  line,  which  is  gen- 
erally out  of  repair.  The  mouth  is  the  busiest 
part  of  the  body,  because  when  it  is  not  eating  it 
has  to  talk.  Some  men  are  able  to  do  both  at  the 
same  time,  but  not  in  such  a  manner  as  to  give 
pleasure  to  the  spectators.  Some  mouths  are  even 
required  to  work  while  their  owners  are  asleep. 
The  fate  of  a  mouth,  which  must  talk  all  day,  and 
then  put  up  a  very  fair  imitation  of  a  sawmill  at 
night,  is  indeed  a  sad  one. 

Some  mouths  are  very  large  and  homely,  wan- 
dering across  the  face  in  a  most  disorderly  and 
unattractive  way,  while  other  mouths  seem  to 
have  been  fashioned  by  an  artist  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose of  being  kissed,  and  are  so  small  and  dainty 

23 


MOUTHS 

and  pretty  that  it  seems  almost  a  sacrilege  to  re- 
quire their  owners  to  poke  potatoes,  and  ham- 
burger steak  and  sauerkraut  and  other  comesti- 
bles into  them.  The  mouth  is  located  just  south 
of  the  nose,  and  can  be  tightly  closed  when  nec- 
essary, by  means  of  the  lower  jaw.  This,  how- 
ever, is  a  piece  of  mechanism  which  is  very  poorly 
understood  by  most  people,  and  in  consequence, 
the  mouth  often  remains  open  at  the  most  inop- 
portune times,  allowing  conversation  to  escape 
which  should  have  been  safely  bottled  up  back  of 
the  ears.  If  some  mouths  could  be  fitted  with 
Maxim  Silencers,  their  owners  would  stand  a  much 
better  chance  of  getting  elected  to  public  office. 

The  mouth  is  also  a  weather  bureau  for  the  dis- 
position. By  its  shape,  we  can  tell  whether  to 
look  for  sunshine  and  warm  weather,  or  squalls, 
storms  and  brickbats  from  its  owner.  When  it  is 
curved  upward  on  either  side,  its  owner  can  gen- 
erally be  tackled  for  small  loans  with  impunity, 
but  beware  of  a  mouth  which  sags  at  the  ends. 


24 


NATURAL  HISTORY 


THE  HEN 

THE  hen  is  a  small  nervous  biped  which  has 
solved  the  problem  of  being  valuable  to 
society  without  a  brain  and  should,  there- 
fore, be  a  great  rebuke  to  the  thousands  of  young 
men  who  are  content  to  roll  their  own  cigarettes 
while  father  pays  for  them. 

The  hen  is  distinguished  for  her  lack  of  sense. 
She  is  particularly  lacking  in  common  or  garden 
sense.  Whenever  she  gets  into  a  garden  she  makes 
a  perfect  fool  of  herself.  Born  with  a  loud  voice 
and  no  particular  cerebral  development  back  of 
it,  she  blunders  through  life  from  one  peril  to  an- 
other. Ten  thousand  generations  of  hens  have 
tried  to  figure  out  how  to  cross  a  road  between  the 
wheels  of  a  vehicle,  but  not  one  of  them  has  con- 
tributed anything  but  feathers  towards  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem.  There  is  nothing  so  ap- 
palling as  the  hen's  lack  of  thought  unless  pos- 
sibly it  is  the  sight  of  the  larger  female  biped  who 
deposits  seven  bundles  on  the  ledge  of  a  stamp 
window,  burrows  into  a  two  bushel  handbag  for 
a  dime  and  then  stamps  five  letters  while  twenty 
people  wait  behind  her. 

The  hen  begins  life  as  a  chick  about  the  size  of 
a  quarter's  worth  of  protected  butter.  At  the 
age  of  three  months  she  is  a  pullet  and  can  be  dis- 
membered and  fried  in  bread  crumbs  and  bacon 

27 


THE  HEN 

fat  with  magnificent  results.  At  the  age  of  six 
months  she  becomes  pensive  and  unless  closely 
watched  will  gather  up  an  old  door  knob,  a  harness 
ring,  and  a  bicycle  bell  and  will  set  on  them  all 
winter  with  the  laudable  intent  of  becoming  a 
mother.  Nothing  is  stronger  or  more  beautiful 
than  the  maternal  instinct  of  the  hen,  and  nothing 
is  so  detrimental  to  the  cause  of  cheap  living  and 
fresh  eggs  for  the  masses. 

The  hen  has  no  teeth  and  is  compelled  to  swal- 
low her  food  whole  like  a  hurried  business  man. 
She  eats  bugs,  worms,  corn,  garden  seeds  and 
gravel  and  welds  them  all  into  eggs  which  she  lays 
cautiously  in  secluded  places  and  then  advertises 
the  fact  in  a  hoarse,  enthusiastic  voice.  She  lays 
these  eggs  at  the  rate  of  one  a  day  when  they  are 
worth  ten  cents  a  dozen,  and  at  the  rate  of  one  a 
month  when  they  are  selling  for  five  cents  apiece. 

The  egg  is  the  triumph  of  the  hen.  When  she 
lays  eggs,  she  ceases  to  become  a  nuisance  and  be- 
comes a  national  asset,  greater  than  the  wheat 
field  or  the  scion  of  aristocracy.  Billions  of  ig- 
norant hens  with  no  future  to  look  forward  to  and 
no  past  to  be  proud  of  are  busy  safeguarding  the 
prosperity  of  America  by  laying  eggs.  This 
should  be  a  precious  thought  to  the  humble  and 
diffident  citizen  who  does  not  go  to  the  polls  and 
cast  a  ballot  for  progress  because  his  efforts  will 
be  so  small.  Let  him  lay  it  in  the  box  while  others 
do  the  same  and  great  will  be  the  results. 

28 


THE  MOUSE 

A  MOUSE  is  a  small,  sleek,  svelt,  lissom 
animal  about  the  size  of  a  small  knot- 
hole. Knotholes  and  mice  were  made 
for  each  other.  If  it  were  not  for  the  mouse  there 
would  be  no  use  for  a  knothole  in  a  house.  But 
whenever  there  is  a  mouse  around,  a  knothole  be- 
comes a  grand  entrance  and  a  lightning  exit. 

Mice  are  gray  and  are  covered  with  fur  and 
can  move  from  hitherto  elsewhere  quicker  than 
Johnny  Evers  when  he  is  catching  a  scrub  run- 
ner off  second.  The  mouse  has  a  long  bare  tail 
by  which  he  can  be  caught  by  a  brave  man 
after  he  has  been  chased  over  $150  worth  of 
furniture.  He  also  has  small  round  ears  like 
clover  leaves,  two  beady  black  eyes  and  a  long 
pointed  mouth  adorned  with  whiskers  and  four 
chisel-like  teeth  several  sizes  too  large  for  him. 

The  mouse's  teeth  are  his  greatest  fault.  If  he 
didn't  have  them  he  might  be  tolerated  in  society. 
But  although  he  is  clean  and  pretty  and  graceful 
he  very  quickly  gnaws  himself  out  of  popularity. 
A  mouse  never  hangs  around  a  house  waiting  for 
a  door  to  be  opened.  He  gnaws  his  way  through 
it.  After  a  mouse  has  inhabited  a  house  for  a  few 
months  he  has  not  only  become  a  great-great-great- 
grandfather, but  has  constructed  a  subway  system 

29 


THE  MOUSE 

which  makes  that  of  New  York's  look  childish.  He 
does  all  of  this  work  after  midnight  when  he  will 
not  be  annoyed  by  questions  and  onlookers. 
There  are  several  things  louder  than  a  mouse  who 
is  devouring  an  oak  door  at  2  A.  M.  A  steam-ham- 
mer is  one  of  them. 

When  a  mouse  has  gorged  himself  on  wood  and 
varnish  he  tops  off  with  a  dessert  of  silk  dresses, 
book  bindings  and  bank  notes.  A  mouse's  idea  of 
Paradise  is  to  get  into  a  stocking  full  of  $10  bills, 
desiccate  them  and  raise  a  family  in  the  soft  re- 
mains. 

Mice  are  not  dangerous  even  when  attacked  and 
are  pitiable  pictures  of  fright  when  they  are 
caught  and  held  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck.  How- 
ever, women  are  as  afraid  of  them  as  men  are  of 
brand  new  babies,  or  politicians  are  of  issues,  or 
actors  are  of  work,  or  millionaires  are  of  the  in- 
come tax.  One  undersized  mouse  can  rid  a  house 
of  an  entire  card  party  by  climbing  up  on  the 
table  and  looking  casually  around,  and  can  stam- 
pede a  suffragette  meeting  quicker  than  nine  po- 
licemen armed  with  pistols.  When  women  have 
finally  secured  the  ballot  universally  the  mouse 
will  become  as  large  a  factor  in  politics  as  the  $2 
bill,  and  the  party  which  votes  its  women  early  and 
then  stocks  the  polling  places  with  fierce  and  car- 
nivorous mice  will  be  vindicated  by  the  people  by 
an  overwhelming  majority. 


30 


THE  CATERPILLAR 

THE  caterpillar  is  a  small,  fuzzy  object, 
which  looks  something  like  a  young  man's 
mustache  in  its  first  stages. 

The  caterpillar  is,  in  fact,  the  sophomore  of  the 
insect  family.  He  is  voracious  and  undesirable, 
but  later  on  he  will  emerge  from  that  state  and 
become  something  entirely  different.  The  butter- 
fly is  as  different  as  the  caterpillar,  from  which 
it  comes,  as  the  husband  and  father  is  from  the 
bouncing  young  sophomore  of  the  open-face,  rib- 
bon-hatted type. 

The  caterpillar  usually  emerges  from  obscurity 
in  the  spring  and  eats  himself  into  a  comatose  con- 
dition by  early  summer.  He  eats  green  things,  as 
the  sophomore  eats  pie,  and  in  both  cases  some 
one  else  has  to  pay  the  bill.  For  this  reason  the 
caterpillar  is  unpopular  and  the  man  who  pounds 
one  with  a  rock  until  it  departs  this  life  in  a  messy 
manner,  never  has  to  sit  up  nights  holding  his 
ramping  conscience  with  both  hands. 

Some  caterpillars  are  very  beautiful,  being  gor- 
geously decorated  with  various  colored  fur,  like 
a  woman  in  winter  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
caterpillar  is  all  dressed  up  and  has  nowhere  to 

31 


THE  CATEEPILLAE 

go.  He  wanders  aimlessly  through  life  and  his 
only  ambition  is  to  crawl  out  on  the  edge  of  a  small 
twig  and  drop  down  upon  the  passing  pedestrian. 
It  takes  the  caterpillar  upwards  of  three  weeks  to 
crawl  a  mile  and  at  the  end  of  the  journey  he  gen- 
erally turns  around  and  starts  back. 

Still,  those  of  us  who  spend  whole  days  watching 
automobiles  chase  each  other  round  a  mile  track 
should  not  laugh  derisively  at  the  caterpillar.  He 
is  entitled  to  some  amusement. 


THE  BOA  CONSTRICTOR 


w  i  ^nE  boa  constrictor  is  a  cross  between  an 
animal  and  a  parade.    It  is  found  in  the 

M  hot,  moist  countries,  which  are  favorable 
to  luxuriant  growths  of  all  kinds,  and  attains  a 
length  varying  from  789  feet,  as  viewed  by  the 
startled  eye,  to  30  feet,  when  stretched  out  and 
measured  with  a  tape  line. 

The  boa  constrictor  is  a  snake,  but  acts  more  like 
a  railway  collision.  When  it  has  gotten  its 
growth  it  is  as  big  around  as  a  beer  keg  and  its 
constant  outdoor  life  gives  it  large  muscles  and 
great  endurance.  It  has  neither  arms  nor  legs, 
but  its  educated  and  versatile  tail  makes  up  for 
this  lack.  When  the  boa  constrictor  wraps  itself 
around  a  personal  enemy,  gets  a  half-hitch  with 
its  tail  around  a  tree  and  then  begins  to  contract, 
its  victim's  ribs  fold  up  like  an  accordeon. 

The  boa  constrictor  travels  by  chasing  itself 
'along  the  ground  and  climbs  trees  without  bother- 
ing to  hunt  for  a  toe  hold.  Its  favorite  occupation 
is  to  festoon  itself  gracefully  from  the  branch  of 
a  tree  and  wait  for  something  to  pass  underneath. 
When  this  happens,  the  extensive  and  hungry 
snake  drops  itself  swiftly  about  its  dinner  and 
squeezes  once  with  a  loud-cracking  noise. 

38 


THE  BOA  CONSTRICTOR 

After  this  nothing  remains  for  the  boa  but  to 
eat  its  meal.  This  is  a  very  serious  matter  with 
it,  however.  Nature,  for  the  protection  of  the  rest 
of  us,  makes  it  hard  for  the  boa  to  eat.  He  has  to 
unjoint  his  jaws  and  swallow  his  meal  whole.  To 
see  a  hungry  constrictor  tucking  away  a  pig  twice 
his  size  is  an  interesting  but  painful  sight.  When 
the  boa  constrictor  has  finished  his  meal,  he  has  a 
knot  as  large  as  a  barrel  half  way  between  his  head 
and  tail,  and  is  all  in. 

For  the  next  month  or  more  the  boa  is  as  sleepy 
and  indifferent  as  a  political  party  after  it  has 
won  an  election  and  has  gotten  all  the  offices.  He 
will  not  move  and  can  be  sawed  into  cord  lengths 
with  impunity. 

The  boa  constrictor  lives  mostly  in  Brazil.  This 
is  one  of  the  greatest  reasons  why  we  should  all 
be  thankful  because  we  live  in  North  America. 


THE  MOSQUITO 

THE  mosquito  is  the  smallest  known  bird  of 
prey.    It  is  one-fourth  of  an  inch  long, 
and  weighs  less  than  a  masher's  brain,  but 
it  can  hoist  a  full  grown  man  out  of  a  porch  chair 
more  quickly  than  a  derrick,  and  even  after  he  has 
gone  indoors  it  will  follow  him  and  feast  upon  him 
until  death  doth  them  part. 

The  mosquito  consists  of  a  drilling  outfit,  a  suc- 
tion pump  and  a  reservoir  attached  to  a  small  aero- 
plane with  a  loud  exhaust.  He  lives  on  human 
gore  and  his  appetite  is  so  enormous  that  three 
large  yearling  mosquitoes  will  almost  entirely  de- 
flate a  fat  baby  in  an  hour. 

The  mosquito  obtains  his  meal  by  roosting  on 
his  hosf;  and  drilling  a  prospect  shaft  with  great 
rapidity,  after  which  he  lowers  his  pumping  outfit 
and  drinks  until  he  bulges.  Owing  to  the  mos- 
quito's carelessness  in  not  sterilizing  his  instru- 
ments, he  generally  poisons  his  victim,  causing  a 
lump  which  varies  in  size  from  a  peanut  in  the  day- 
time when  you  can  see  it,  to  a  watermelon  at  night 
when  you  can't.  It  should  be  the  duty  of  all  citi- 
zens to  catch  and  sterilize  as  many  mosquitoes  as 
possible.  This  can  be  done  by  boiling  them  for 
an  hour. 

35 


THE  MOSQUITO 

Mosquitoes  breed  in  stagnant  water  and  can  be 
exterminated  by  pouring  kerosene  on  all  ponds  and 
pools.  A  barrel  of  oil  in  June  will  save  nine  bil- 
lion slaps  in  August.  In  some  parts  of  the  coun- 
try mosquitoes  are  so  large  and  ravenous  that  they 
carry  straws  and  imbibe  their  victims  through 
wire  screens  as  a  summer  girl  laps  up  a  soda. 
Mosquitoes  can  be  kept  out  of  the  house  by  plac- 
ing the  latter  on  barges  in  the  middle  of  a  large 
ocean.  The  roar  of  lions  in  Africa  is  no  more  ter- 
rifying than  the  loud,  menacing  hum  of  one  mos- 
quito who  has  squeezed  through  a  hole  in  the 
screen,  and  is  cruising  about  the  bedroom  at  mid- 
night and  looking  you  over  with  a  critical  and 
hungry  eye. 

Mosquitoes  have  strong  heads  and  can  dine  for 
hours  on  a  Kentucky  Colonel  without  becoming 
intoxicated.  But  they  are  no  match  for  gold  mine 
promoters  or  ward  politicians.  Many  a  mosquito 
has  retired  from  the  cheek  of  one  of  these  species 
of  citizen  with  a  bent  and  twisted  drill,  and  has 
gotten  a  cold  and  cruel  laugh  from  a  world  which 
has  no  sympathy  for  him. 


36 


THE  FLY 

THE  fly  is  only  a  little  thing  but  he  is  as  un- 
popular as  if  he  were  a  trust.  He  is 
unpopular  for  three  reasons :  1 — because 
he  gets  up  too  early  in  the  morning;  2 — because 
he  comes  where  he  hasn't  been  invited,  and  3 — be- 
cause he  does  not  keep  his  feet  clean. 

The  fly  hasn't  a  thing  to  do  in  the  world  and 
could  well  afford  to  sleep  until  10  o'clock.  In- 
stead he  gets  up  at  daybreak  and  flies  around  the 
nearest  bedroom  like  a  French  monoplane  going 
after  the  Gordon-Bennett  cup.  When  he  has  fin- 
ished 1100  circuits  he  cools  off  by  flying  700  times 
around  the  exposed  ear  of  the  person  who  sup- 
poses himself  to  be  sleeping  in  that  room.  Then 
he  sits  down  on  the  forehead  of  said  person  and 
digs  holes  in  his  skin  with  all  the  vim  of  a  small 
boy  excavating  in  a  piano  with  a  new  jackknife. 

Because  of  these  actions  a  great  many  taxpayers 
wake  at  5  A.  M.  entirely  against  their  will  and 
spend  the  next  three  hours  hating  the  fly  and  plan- 
ning for  his  ultimate  ruin. 

The  fly  also  attends  meals  without  being  asked, 
spends  long  hours  in  parlors,  whose  owners  he 
does  not  even  know  by  name,  and  sneaks  into  kitch- 

37 


THE  FLY 

ens  through  leaky  screen  doors  and  gorges  him- 
self on  food  intended  for  others.  Because  of  this 
failing  a  great  many  flies  get  thrown  out  of  Amer- 
ican homes.  It  is  possible  to  throw  a  fly  out  of 
the  house  without  ruining  him  permanently,  but 
very  few  people  take  the  trouble  to  practice  up  in 
this  art. 

Worst  of  all  is  the  fly's  well  known  carelessness 
about  his  feet.  He  is  the  small  boy  of  the  insect 
tribe  and  likes  nothing  better  than  to  wade  around 
knee  deep  in  microbes  and  then  track  them  all  over 
the  house. 

Until  the  fly  sleeps  later,  rings  the  doorbell  be- 
fore visiting  strangers,  and  soaks  his  feet  in  car- 
bolic acid  each  evening,  he  can  never  hope  to  be- 
come popular  in  this  country,  and  swatting  him 
will  continue  to  be  the  great  American  exercise. 


THE  PEACOCK 

"IT  IT  "THEN  the  Creator  finished  up  Adam 
%  f\  I  and  Eve  He  discovered  that  there 

jl  \  would  be  no  fancy  styles  in  dress  for 
several  thousand  years,  so  He  made  the  peacock  to 
supply  the  deficiency. 

The  peacock  consists  of  a  large  and  magnificent 
collection  of  tail  feathers  equipped  with  motive 
power.  This  motive  power  consists  of  a  body  and 
a  small  head  with  a  garret  for  rent.  The  mission 
of  the  peacock  is  to  wear  his  gorgeous  tail  around 
the  landscape  and  to  unfurl  it  wherever  there  is 
to  be  a  spectator  to  be  dazzled.  That  is  all  he  is 
good  for.  The  oldtime  kings  had  to  eat  peacocks 
to  live  up  to  their  position,  but  it  was  a  great 
chore.  Like  many  other  wearers  of  fine  clothes, 
the  peacock  is  tough  and  stringy  and  eminently 
undesirable  in  flavor. 

The  peacock's  tail  is  the  most  gorgeous  thing  in 
nature,  however.  It  consists  of  dozens  of  fine, 
long,  radiantly  tinted  feathers  and  each  feather 
has  a  beautiful  eye  at  its  farther  end.  These  eyes, 
however,  cannot  see  a  thing,  which  makes  ten  pea- 
cocks equal  to  an  entire  Chicago  police  force. 

The  fact  that  the  peacock  is  as  gaudy  as  a  Fifth 
Avenue  parade,  while  his  wife,  the  peahen,  is  a 

39 


THE  PEACOCK 

modest  creature,  is  regarded  by  some  as  remark- 
able. However,  man  has  not  always  been  the  som- 
ber individual  that  he  is  to-day.  Three  hundred 
years  ago  a  king's  courtier  was  so  gaudily  dressed 
that  he  made  a  peacock  look  as  if  he  was  in  mourn- 
ing. In  those  days  when  a  man  who  had  any  so- 
ciety aspirations  spent  hours  each  day  in  arraying 
himself  in  gold  lace,  powdered  curls,  lace  cuff  and 
pink  silk  panties,  the  peacock  was  greatly  re- 
spected for  his  modesty.  In  fact,  he  was  gener- 
ally admired  for  his  good  sense.  He  cost  a  great 
deal  less  than  a  gentleman,  was  more  useful  and 
didn't  fight  so  much. 

Nowadays  the  peacock  leads  a  sad  and  neglected 
life  except  in  a  few  English  estates,  and  in  spite 
of  his  great  beauty,  is  not  appreciated.  This  is 
partly  because  of  his  voice,  which  is  a  cross  be- 
tween an  automobile  alarm  horn  and  a  saw  hitting 
a  nail,  and  partly  because  he  no  longer  has  a  press 
agent.  This  is  a  hustling  world  and  very  few  soci- 
ety women  or  peacocks  can  succeed  by  true  worth 
alone. 


40 


THE  DEER 

THE  deer  is  a  refined  and  beautiful  third 
cousin  of  the  cow.  It  has  never  gone  into 
domestic  science,  but  lives  a  wild,  free  life 
in  the  woods,  furnishing  inspiration  to  poets,  and 
dinners  to  wolves,  tigers,  panthers  and  various 
other  animals  which  are  not  vegetarians. 

The  deer  is  very  delicately  made,  with  Chippen- 
dale legs,  large  expressive  ears  and  deep,  liquid, 
soulful  eyes.  It  has  a  beautiful  mottled  coat  and 
it  spends  most  of  its  time  trying  to  keep  this  coat 
for  itself.  This  is  not  because  the  deer  has  a  self- 
ish disposition  but  because  it  is  a  very  serious 
matter  to  have  its  coat  removed.  It  is  always 
done  just  subsequent  to  the  death  of  the  deer  itself. 

The  deer  lives  in  the  forests  and  plains  as  far 
from  man  as  possible  and  spends  its  time  leaping 
nimbly  from  hither  to  yon.  The  deer's  legs  are 
made  of  coil  springs  and  it  can  remove  itself  from 
a  given  portion  of  the  landscape  with  great  rapid- 
ity. Between  removals  it  spends  its  time  eating 
grass  and  herbs  and  producing  fawns  or  infant 
deer,  which  are  innocent  little  creatures  composed 
mostly  of  ears. 

Like  most  beautiful  creatures  the  deer  leads  an 
unhappy  life  and  comes  to  a  sad  end.  This  is  be- 

41 


THE  DEEE 

cause  it  is  too  well  beloved.  Its  flesh  is  very  pop- 
ular. Its  hide  is  eagerly  sought  for  by  the  In- 
dians who  make  shoes  and  clothes  out  of  it  And 
it  is  greatly  esteemed  by  sportsmen  as  a  mark. 
There  is  no  more  popular  pastime  than  that  of 
going  out  into  the  woods  and  hitting  a  deer  with  a 
rifle  bullet.  Thousands  of  men  go  into  the  woods 
each  fall  to  shoot  deer.  Owing  to  the  growing 
scarcity  of  the  deer,  the  hunters  have  recently 
taken  to  shooting  each  other  by  mistake.  Thus 
the  deer  in  its  quiet  and  gentle  fashion  is  getting 
considerable  revenge. 

It  is  extremely  cruel  to  shoot  an  innocent,  con- 
fiding deer  in  the  neck — almost  as  cruel  as  it  is  to 
leave  the  same  deer  to  be  chewed  up  by  a  mountain 
lion  later  on. 


42 


THE  CHANGING  SEASONS 


JANUARY 

JANUARY  is  the  first  month  of  the  year.  For 
this  reason  we  should  not  be  too  impatient 
with  it.  The  succeeding  months  improve 
steadily,  which  shows  that  practice  is  necessary 
to  make  even  a  calendar  perfect. 

January  arrives  after  winter  has  taken  off  its 
things  and  has  settled  down  for  keeps.  It  is  one 
of  our  finest  indoor  months,  but  is  not  affection- 
ately regarded  by  fishermen,  baseball  players,  or 
scenery  sellers.  Nature  is  as  beautiful  in  Janu- 
ary as  she  is  in  July  but  very  few  people  worship 
her.  It  is  too  much  trouble  to  shovel  snow  off  of 
her  face. 

January  is  a  fine  month  in  which  to  read  '  *  Pick- 
wick Papers,"  "The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,"  "Potash  and  Perlmutter,"  and 
other  gems  of  literature.  It  takes  some  practice 
to  do  this,  but  a  man  soon  learns  how  to  chauffeur 
a  book  with  one  hand  and  a  furnace  with  the  other, 
and  can  absorb  a  great  deal  of  learning  during  the 
cold  winter  evenings.  When  January  is  in  good 
form  and  is  going  strong,  the  owner  of  an  old- 
fashioned  tepid-air  furnace  has  to  have  his  meals 
brought  down  to  the  cellar  to  him  and  only  escapes 
now  and  then  to  shovel  345  lineal  feet  of  sidewalk 

45 


JANUAEY 

after  each  snow.  It  takes  a  broad  man  to  accom- 
modate a  snow  shovel  lame  back  and  a  coal  shovel 
lame  back  at  the  same  time  without  confusing  the 
two  and  getting  his  treatments  mixed. 

January  is  a  favorite  month  with  the  amateur 
gardener.  In  this  month  he  does  his  finest  work. 
At  no  time  of  the  year  is  he  so  happy  as  he  is  in 
January  as  he  sits  by  the  fire  during  the  evening, 
growing  ten  pound  potatoes  and  melons  which 
have  to  be  cut  with  a  two  man  saw.  Nurserymen 
become  rich  in  January  by  accompanying  amateur 
gardeners  in  their  dreams,  but  no  nurseryman  is 
foolish  enough  to  come  around  in  July  to  pay  a 
friendly  calL 

In  Canada,  January  is  greatly  beloved  because 
of  the  toboggan  slides,  ice  palaces  and  hockey 
games  which  flourish  in  that  climate.  The  style 
of  January  used  in  the  United  States  south  of 
Minnesota  is  not  stable  enough  to  encourage  ice 
palaces,  however.  The  only  ice  palaces  erected  in 
the  United  States  are  those  built  by  icemen.  They 
are  made  out  of  ice  and  last  all  summer,  but  they 
are  not  popular. 

In  January  the  principal  amusements  are  skat- 
ing, sleighing,  and  attending  annual  meetings. 
January  is  now  a  more  pleasant  month  than  it  was 
when  it  was  first  discovered,  but  it  will  be  still  fur- 
ther improved  as  soon  as  some  method  of  heating, 
cooling  and  ventilating  street  cars  at  the  same 
time  can  be  devised. 


46 


FEBKUARY 

THE  nicest  things  about  February  are  the 
thirtieth  and  thirty-first  days  of  the 
month,  from  which  we  are  perpetually  ex- 
cused, and  the  twenty-ninth  day,  which  comes  only 
once  in  four  years. 

February  comes  along  when  every  one  is  tired 
of  winter,  and  is  about  as  welcome  as  a  ninth  piece 
of  pie  or  a  second  attack  of  mumps.  February  is 
just  like  January  only  more  so  at  times,  but  the 
calendar  isn't  hard-hearted  enough  to  compel  man- 
kind to  serve  out  all  of  the  usual  thirty-day  sen- 
tence. Brevity  is  the  sole  cause  of  February's 
popularity  and  this  should  be  a  lesson  to  every 
lecturer. 

In  February  the  days  grow  longer,  but  this 
pleasure  is  offset  by  the  annoyance  of  receiving 
telegrams  and  souvenir  cards  from  friends  who 
are  sitting  in  the  sunshine  in  Southern  Califor- 
nia and  exaggerating  the  climate  in  perfect  safety. 
More  than  one  man  has  risen  in  the  middle  of'  an 
Illinois  February  night,  and  has  accumulated  fifty 
miles  of  north  wind  under  his  night  shirt  while 
he  stood  at  his  front  door  and  receipted  for  a  tele- 
gram from  his  wife  in  Pasadena  telling  him  that 

47 


FEBRUARY 

roses  are  perfuming  the  air  as  she  sits  on  the  hotel 
porch  without  wraps  on. 

Although  February  contains  only  twenty-eight 
days,  it  is  our  most  eventful  month.  Its  greatest 
feat  has  been  the  production  of  both  Washington 
and  Lincoln.  This  grateful  nation  makes  holi- 
days of  both  birthdays,  thus  reducing  the  working 
days  in  February  to  22,  and  making  it  enormously 
popular  with  bank  clerks  and  government  em- 
ployes. In  February  also  St.  Valentine's  day  oc- 
curs. This  is  a  fine  day  on  which  to  get  even  with 
some  enemy  who  is  too  large  to  lick,  by  sending 
him  a  beautiful  tinted  portrait  of  a  fat  man  with  a 
tomato  nose  and  large  fuzzy  ears  and  writing  his 
name  underneath  so  he  will  catch  the  resemblance. 

But  February  is  chiefly  noted  for  its  twenty- 
ninth  day,  which  occurs  once  in  four  years  thus 
producing  what  is  known  as  "leap-year."  This 
name  is  derived  from  the  fact  that  in  this  year  un- 
married young  women  are  supposed  to  leap  fero- 
ciously upon  eligible  young  men  and  drag  them 
shrieking  to  the  altar.  The  open  season  lasts  all 
year  and  is  of  great  assistance  in  ridding  the 
world  of  bachelors. 

An  extra  day  every  four  years  is  a  great  boon 
even  if  it  is  in  February,  and  thus  far  little  use 
of  it  seems  to  have  been  made.  It  might  be  a 
good  plan  to  preserve  it  as  the  day  on  which  to 
read  the  gold  mining  circulars  which  have  accu- 
mulated during  the  preceding  four  years. 

48 


THE  29TH  OF  FEBRUARY 

THE  29th  of  February  is  the  scarcest  day  in 
all  the  years.  It  was  invented  by  Pope 
Gregory  three  centuries  ago,  in  order  to 
take  up  the  slack  in  the  calendar.  He  discovered 
that  the  calendar  had  been  losing  time  at  the  rate 
of  one  day  in  every  four  years,  and  that  if  some- 
thing wasn't  done  about  it,  Christmas  would  even- 
tually arrive  in  the  dog  days,  and  the  world  would 
suffer  severely  from  the  heat  in  December.  So 
he  gave  every  fourth  year  an  extra  day  and  called 
it  Leap  Year.  As  February  has  been  stunted  since 
its  birth,  it  was  given  the  new  day. 

However,  even  with  the  extra  day,  the  calendar 
does  not  keep  exact  time  with  the  sun.  Few  peo- 
ple realize  how  necessary  it  has  been  to  wind  up 
and  regulate  the  calendar,  which  is  as  sensitive  as 
an  eight-day  clock.  With  an  extra  day  every  four 
years,  the  calendar  would  be  a  trifle  fast  and  would 
gain  a  day  every  133  years.  While  this  gain  would 
not  be  enough  to  cause  immediate  alarm,  or  de- 
press business,  except,  perhaps,  on  Wall  Street, 
astronomers  are  fussy,  and  like  to  be  exact  about 
such  things.  So  on  every  hundredth  year  not  di- 
visible by  400,  leap  year  is  omitted.  Thus  the 
year  1900  was  not  a  leap  year,  and  great  suffering 

49 


THE  29TH  OF  FEBKUARY 

resulted  among  the  joke  makers.  However,  the 
year  2000  will  be  a  leap  year,  and  so  will  the  year 
2400,  though  by  that  time  scientists  will  probably 
be  running  the  earth  the  other  way,  and  regulat- 
ing the  speed  with  a  push  button. 

We  owe  a  great  deal  to  the  patient  astronomers, 
who  have  stood  century  after  century,  stopwatch 
in  hand  and  eyes  glued  to  the  telescope,  watching 
the  progress  of  the  earth  around  the  sun,  and  an- 
nouncing to  an  anxious  world  that  it  is  exactly  on 
time.  Before  the  astronomical  time-table  was  re- 
vived, the  Earth  was  as  much  as  11  days  late,  and 
there  was  great  grumbling  all  along  the  line,  but 
this  has  all  been  corrected.  Eailroad  superin- 
tendents who  are  unable  to  get  a  train  over  100 
miles  of  track  and  guess  within  an  hour  of  its  ar- 
rival, have  a  great  deal  to  learn  from  astronomers. 

The  29th  of  February  is  a  fine  day  on  which  to 
practice  economy,  forgive  enemies,  read  German 
philosophy  and  do  other  disagreeable  duties. 
People  who  are  born  on  this  day  have  only  one 
birthday  in  every  four  years,  which  makes  them 
very  popular  with  their  relatives.  Among  those 
who  have  been  born  on  the  29th  of  February  are 
Lillian  Russell,  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  many  other 
hardy  perennials. 


50 


MARCH 

THE  month  of  March  is  a  sort  of  meteorolog- 
ical political  campaign.  It  is  composed 
mostly  of  wind  and  dust  in  the  eyes. 

March  begins  just  after  we  have  become  very 
tired  of  winter  and  continues  until  we  are  heart- 
ily ashamed  of  ourselves  for  having  said  anything 
against  January  and  February.  It  is  cold,  raw, 
bleak,  changeable,  impetuous,  blustering  and  furi- 
ous. Sometimes  March  warms  up  and  encourages 
the  householder  to  believe  that  he  can  make  his 
last  wagonload  of  coal  do  until  spring.  But  it 
always  freezes  up  again,  just  as  he  has  gotten 
down  to  the  last  bushel  and  compels  him  to  chop 
up  the  laundry  bench  and  a  few  old  chairs  to  es- 
cape an  Arctic  demise. 

March  comes  in  like  a  lion  and  continues  like  a 
rhinoceros,  a  timber  wolf  and  an  insurgent  Con- 
gressman. Existence  in  March  is  further  compli- 
cated by  Lent,  which  begins  early  in  the  month 
as  a  rule,  and  continues  through  it.  During  Lent 
devout  people  are  supposed  to  abstain  from  all 
earthly  pleasures.  But  no  one  keeps  Lent  half 
as  devoutly  as  the  month  of  March,  itself. 

March  was  named  for  Mars,  the  god  of  war  and 
is  a  chip  of  the  old  block.  In  its  early  history,  it 

51 


MARCH 

was  afflicted  with  Ides,  one  of  which  was  fatal  to 
Julius  Caesar,  but  it  has  entirely  recovered  from 
them  and  is  now  unincumbered  by  holidays.  The 
presidents  of  the  United  States  are  inaugurated 
on  the  4th  of  March  but  the  month  hasn't  appreci- 
ated the  honor  and  has  treated  the  parades  with 
much  contempt,  snowing,  raining  and  hailing  on 
them  with  great  regularity.  For  this  reason,  the 
residents  of  Washington  who  think  that  Presi- 
dents are  elected  for  the  purpose  of  having  inau- 
gural parades  want  the  beginning  of  the  presiden- 
tial term  pushed  on  into  May;  while  others  who 
think  that  a  newly  elected  president  should  have 
the  job  turned  over  to  him  before  old  age  carries 
him  off,  think  he  should  be  inaugurated  in  Janu- 
ary, with  a  parade  composed  entirely  of  office  seek- 
ers. 


52 


APRIL 

APRIL  is  a  brief,  emotional  monfh  which 
has  only  thirty  days  and  spends  most  of 
its  time  weeping  for  the  thirty-first.  It 
arrives  just  after  the  backbone  of  March  has  been 
broken,  and  lasts  until  it  is  safe  to  put  on  a  thin 
necktie  and  a  cotton  vest  and  go  to  a  baseball 
game  without  a  footwarmer. 

April  consists  of  sunshine  and  sobs  in  equal 
doses,  like  a  Hearne  melodrama,  and  is  one  of  our 
most  charming  months  in  spots.  When  the  April 
sky  is  blue,  and  the  warm  breezes  are  enticing  the 
diffident  radish  from  the  bosom  of  the  garden, 
April  is  so  fascinating  that  the  whole  world  goes 
out  of  doors  in  order  to  breathe  it  in  larger  quan- 
tities. In  April,  the  apple,  peach  and  cherry  trees 
explode  into  blossom,  and  nature  everywhere  be- 
comes green  and  fresh  and  tender.  The  country 
roads  also  lose  their  hard  callous  nature  and  be- 
come soft  and  succulent.  After  April  has  rained 
for  about  nineteen  days  on  an  eight  hour  schedule, 
the  roads  become  so  soft  and  embracing  that  the 
mail  carrier  has  to  sit  on  his  buggy  top  to  keep 
his  necktie  out  of  the  mud. 

April  is  chiefly  noted  in  the  United  States  for 
the  opening  of  the  baseball  season.  During  the 

53 


APRIL' 

last  ten  days  of  the  month  a  million  baseball  fans 
are  suddenly  turned  on  and  life  once  more  becomes 
bright  and  stuffed  full  of  interest.  There  is  no 
more  inspiring  sight  than  that  of  a  baseball  fan  in 
April,  as  he  sits  in  the  thick  weather  on  the  port 
side  of  third  and  shouts  hoarse  encouragement  to 
the  baserunner,  who  is  sliding  grandly  to  third 
through  the  billows,  tossing  up  spray  like  a  racing 
motor  boat. 

April  elections  also  give  us  our  mayors  and  al- 
dermen. Because  of  this,  a  great  many  reformers 
are  demanding  that  April  be  left  out  of  the  cal- 
endar. 

April  is  barred  by  two  great  sorrows — the  late 
frost  and  the  early  spring  housecleaning.  The 
late  frost  comes  like  a  dastardly  assassin  and  mur- 
ders the  innocent  spring  vegetables  and  the  con- 
gressional boom,  while  the  early  housecleaning 
breaks  loose  with  relentless  fury  in  many  a  happy 
home  and  shuffles  it  up  until  the  distressed  hus- 
band has  to  find  his  way  through  the  parlor  at 
night  with  a  guide,  to  say  nothing  of  saving  up 
enough  money  to  buy  back  his  second  and  third 
best  pairs  of  pants  from  the  old  clothes  man. 

April  is  a  beautiful  month  south  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  celebrated  line.  North  of  this  line,  how- 
ever, it  is  like  a  stock  company  gold  mine — it  con- 
sists mostly  of  prospects. 


54 


MAY 

THE  month  of  May  is  a  long  stretch  of  joy 
inclosed  between  two  of  our  saddest  holi- 
days. On  the  first  of  May  millions  of  sor- 
rowful Americans  bid  good-by  to  the  old  home- 
steads which  have  sheltered  them  for  the  past 
twelve  months,  and  move  into  other  flats  with 
warmer  hot  water.  On  the  thirty-first  of  May  we 
mourn  the  noble  dead  who  fought  for  their  coun- 
try and  left  widows  to  fight  for  a  pension  against 
the  stern  and  unswerving  descendants  of  the  men 
who  stayed  at  home. 

Otherwise,  however,  May  is  our  happiest  month. 
It  arrives  with  the  last  coal  bill,  and  departs  before 
the  first  fly.  In  May,  Spring  becomes  entirely  con- 
valescent, and  for  the  first  time  man  can  shed  his 
coat  and  go  forth  to  view  the  budding  world  with- 
out fear  of  freezing  fast  in  the  mud.  Astronom- 
ically, May  is  the  last  month  of  Spring,  but  ther- 
mometrically,  it  is  usually  the  first.  Spring  is  one 
of  our  slowest  starters,  and  often  finishes  entirely 
before  it  begins. 

The  month  of  May  is  bounded  on  one  side  by 
chest  protectors,  angora  hats,  and  stump  speeches, 
and  on  the  other  side  by  soda  fountains,  mosquito 
netting  and  vacation  folders.  It  is  the  happiest 

55 


MAY 

month  of  the  year  for  college  students,  who  steal 
away  to  remote  campus  corners  and  get  engaged 
in  vast  droves.  It  is  the  busiest  month  for  dress- 
makers, abutting  as  it  does  on  June,  and  it  is  a 
brief  season  of  bliss  and  rest  for  politicians,  who 
have  either  just  been  elected  during  April,  or  have 
been  laid  quietly  away  in  the  peaceful  discard  to 
await  another  year. 

May,  however,  is  a  sorrowful  month  for  the  au- 
tomobilist,  who  generally  discovers  while  shaking 
the  mothballs  out  of  his  last  year's  car  that  $150 
worth  of  automobile  tires  have  become  limp  and 
dead  and  excessively  no  good  during  the  long, 
cruel  winter. 

May  is  a  generally  prosperous  month,  because 
in  May  most  people  complete  the  accumulation  of 
cash  necessary  to  take  them  away  on  their  June 
vacations.  It  is  a  fine  month  in  which  to  look 
over  prospectuses  of  summer  hotels  and  ocean  voy- 
ages, if  only  the  looker  has  strength  of  mind 
enough  to  compromise  on  a  new  hammock  later 
on.  Of  late  May  has  also  become  a  favorite  month 
in  which  to  become  the  owner  of  a  next  year's 
model  60  H.  P.  roadster,  with  the  gasoline  tank 
arranged  in  a  more  swagger  position,  and  to  drive 
the  same  thunderously  down  the  street,  filling  the 
owners  of  7,000  out  of  date  cars  with  horror  and 
despair. 


56 


JUNE 

JUNE,  the  peerless  month  of  roses  and  ro- 
mance, strawberries  and  straw  hats,  soft 
breezes  and  still  softer  conversation,  is  the 
most  poetic  month  of  the  year.  By  June  Nature 
has  gotten  over  her  waking  up  grouch  and  has  got- 
ten down  to  her  job  of  upholstering  the  world  in 
flowers  and  vegetation.  The  world  is  handsomer 
in  June  than  in  any  other  month  and  the  weather 
has  more  decent  intervals. 

In  June,  people  fall  in  love  with  each  other  with- 
out effort  and  get  married  in  the  evening  under 
floral  bells  in  the  presence  of  large  companies  of 
invited  presents.  June  averages  a  wedding  every 
1%  seconds.  It  isn't  June  weather,  however, 
which  makes  its  weddings,  but  the  fact  that  it 
usually  takes  until  June  for  the  prospective  bride- 
groom to  recover  from  Christmas  and  save  enough 
for  his  wedding  trip. 

June  is  also  very  prolific  in  commencements.  In 
June  thousands  of  eager  young  high  school  stu- 
dents and  collegians  graduate  in  loud,  clear  tones, 
and  hundreds  of  college  towns  sink  into  a  coma- 
tose state  for  the  next  three  months.  Commence- 
ment is  a  very  happy  season  for  newly  fledged 
graduates  and  also  for  the  weary  fathers  who  foot 

57 


JUNE 

the  college  bills,  for  "commencement"  means 
"Get-through-ment"  for  them. 

June  gives  us  our  early  spring  vegetables,  our 
cherries  and  presidential  nominees  and  also  our 
tornadoes  and  bugs.  These  are  its  greatest  draw- 
backs. The  June  tornado  is  unusually  fierce  and 
carnivorous,  and  the  beautiful  hazy,  lazy  June 
weather  must  be  strained  through  screens  before 
it  is  let  into  the  house,  in  order  to  free  it  from  its 
vast  entomological  deposits.  In  June  the  Inter- 
national Bugs'  union  holds  a  convention  around 
every  arc  light  and  the  friendly  but  undesirable 
June  Bug  enters  many  a  peaceful  home  through 
the  keyhole  and  gets  so  tangled  up  in  daughter's 
golden  hair  that  she  has  to  take  it  off  and  beat  it 
with  a  club  to  get  rid  of  him. 

In  June  the  music  of  a  million  birds  mingles 
with  the  twitter  of  ten  thousand  lawn  mowers  and 
the  swift,  sullen  swat  of  the  folded  newspaper  as 
it  caves  in  the  ribs  of  the  early  summer  fly.  In 
June  the  woodland  ants  hail  the  returning  picnic 
with  hungry  joy,  the  small  boy  takes  off  his  shoes 
and  carefully  loses  them,  the  reckless  man  shucks 
off  his  coat  and  the  cautious  man  removes  his  win- 
ter underwear.  In  June  the  thermometer  aviates, 
while  the  price  of  eggs  dives  deep  and  the  straw 
hat  blooms  until  the  first  summer  shower.  June 
is  indeed  a  month  of  bliss,  with  plenty  of  season- 
ing in  it. 


58 


JULY 

JULY  is  the  hottest  of  months  and  is  named 
for  Julius  Caesar,  who  made  it  so  hot  for  the 
barbarians  and  standpatters  in  and  around 
Rome  a  few  years  before  the  British  shipping 
regulations  were  formulated. 

July  begins  with  palm  leaf  fans,  shirt  sleeves 
and  a  rising  thermometer,  and  closes  with  brass 
sunsets,  feverish  refrigerators,  and  ice  on  the  back 
of  the  neck.  Its  mission  is  to  be  hot  and  it  sticks 
to  its  job  day  and  night,  like  a  man  who  is  repair- 
ing automobiles  at  80  cents  an  hour. 

In  July  men  carry  their  coats  over  their  shoul- 
ders and  sleep  on  the  parlor  floor  with  a  mosquito 
net  for  a  quilt.  In  July  dogs  go  mad  and  froth  at 
the  mouth,  like  New  York  editors  discussing 
Roosevelt,  and  Texans  shoot  each  other  over  the 
crop  outlook  if  no  better  excuse  can  be  found.  In 
July  corn  grows  so  fast  at  night  that  the  noise 
disturbs  the  farmers,  and  the  automobilist  who 
rushes  off  in  search  of  pleasure  comes  home  in  a 
few  hours  and  takes  a  quart  of  dirt  out  of  his  hair 
with  a  vacuum  cleaner. 

In  July  men  are  hot  and  irritable,  and  one  word 
doesn't  lead  to  another,  but  to  a  paving  brick.  A 
man  who  could  be  pounded  on  the  head  with  safety 

59 


JULY 

in  December,  will  walk  ten  blocks  during  the  last 
of  July  to  find  a  friend  and  get  up  an  argument 
over  the  Panama  Canal  with  him  and  make  a  pur- 
ple aster  out  of  his  left  eye.  Political  conventions 
are  held  in  June,  but  no  party  thinks  of  starting 
the  campaign  in  July.  If  it  did  there  wouldn't 
be  one  left  to  vote  in  November. 

July  was  responsible  for  our  national  freedom. 
The  Continental  Congress  met  in  Philadelphia  in 
June  and  by  July  4th  had  gotten  hot  enough  and 
mad  enough  to  issue  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. July  also  furnished  the  battle  of 
Gettysburg,  the  Siege  of  Vicksburg,  the  capture 
of  the  Bastile  and  many  other  heated  events  of 
great  importance. 

July  is  regarded  with  devotion  by  laundry  men, 
hotel  keepers,  druggists,  ice  men  and  writers  of 
love  stories  which  can  be  read  without  slipping  the 
brain  into  gear.  But  the  husband  of  the  wife  who 
moves  to  the  seashore  in  summer  comments  on 
July  in  hissing  tones  as  he  ascends  the  stool  in  a 
quick  lunch  counter  on  an  evening  that  is  stuffed 
full  of  calorics,  and  asks  his  neighbor  to  reef  his 
elbow  and  make  room  for  a  plate  of  iced  beans. 


60 


AUGUST 

NO  ONE  has  ever  found  any  particular  ex- 
cuse for  August,  and  its  only  enjoyable 
feature  is  the  fact  that  after  it  is  over 
September  will  arrive  on  the  scene. 

August  comes  after  the  world  has  panted  fever- 
ishly through  July,  and  its  sole  mission  is  to  make 
the  latter  month  seem  like  a  summer  resort.  In 
August  the  thermometer  takes  a  thirty-day  lease 
on  the  nineties  and  makes  a  century  run  every 
other  day.  People  who  have  perspired  good-na- 
turedly through  July  give  up  in  August  and  say 
unkind  things  even  to  the  minister  when  he  comes 
to  tea.  If  August  could  be  eliminated  the  amount 
of  ill-nature  in  this  country  would  be  decreased 
about  45  per  cent. 

August  has  31  days  and  there  isn't  a  holiday 
among  them.  In  June  and  July  the  thermometer 
occasionally  comes  down  at  night  and  visits  the 
70  mark,  but  in  August  it  only  gets  a  little  less  hot 
after  midnight.  People  with  $300  mahogany  beds 
and  $11,000  rooms  leave  them  in  August  and  go 
downstairs  to  sleep  on  the  front  porch  on  a  $2.50 
cot  and  a  sheet.  This  would  be  a  shocking  thing 
to  do  in  June,  but  nothing  is  very  shocking  in  Au- 
gust. 

61 


AUGUST 

Nobody  works  very  hard  in  August  except  soft 
drink  men  and  baseball  players,  who  run  better 
when  they  are  hot,  like  automobiles.  Even  presi- 
dential campaigns  are  put  on  ice  in  August.  It  is 
no  month  in  which  to  use  burning  language. 

In  August  the  world  is  divided  into  two  classes 
— those  who  can  run  away,  and  those  who  have  to 
face  it.  With  the  aid  of  an  ice  chest,  an  electric 
fan,  and  a  sleeping  porch,  August  can  be  endured 
very  successfully  at  home,  but  the  babies  who  have 
to  live  in  a  superheated  tenement  on  sour  milk 
very  frequently  decide  that  the  world  is  not  worth 
living  in  and  retire  from  it.  This  causes  hard  feel- 
ings among  parents  and  philanthropists,  and  it  is 
generally  agreed  that  the  men  who  charge  high 
prices  for  tenement  rooms  without  windows  and 
the  men  who  increase  the  price  of  ice  to  mothers  in 
order  to  reduce  it  to  saloonkeepers  will  eventually 
land  in  a  climate  which  is  always  August  or  worse. 


62 


SEPTEMBER 

SEPTEMBER  is  a  medium  weight,  low  pres- 
sure month  which  begins  at  the  end  of  the 
electric  fan  season  and  ends  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the   thick  underwear   solstice.    It   was 
named  by  the  Romans  who  used  it  as  the  seventh 
month  of  the  calendar,  but  who  afterwards  en- 
larged the  year,  owing  to  the  growth  of  business 
and  pushed  it  on  to  ninth  place,  where  it  has 
served  with  marked  success  ever  since  Augustus 
Caesar  was  a  senior  in  college. 

September  is  the  first  month  of  autumn  and  is 
regarded  with  affection  by  all  people  who  haven't 
been  able  to  spend  the  summer  at  the  seashore. 
To  these  it  comes  as  a  great  relief,  but  to  the  man 
who  has  concealed  his  family  in  a  summer  resort 
for  three  months  it  consists  mostly  of  overdue  bills 
and  a  frantic  hunt  for  a  new  cook. 

In  September  colleges  begin  to  become  feverish 
again  and  violate  the  noise  regulations  by  manu- 
facturing freshmen  without  mufflers  in  huge 
quantities.  In  September  also  the  football  candi- 
date dons  a  leather  soup  kettle  and  a  rubber  fender 
for  his  nose,  and  begins  to  insert  himself  into  the 
thorax  of  the  enemy  at  the  rate  of  five  yards  per 
insertion,  next  to  pure  reading  matter. 

63 


SEPTEMBER 

In  September  apples,  grapes  and  watermelons 
ripen  in  the  temperate  zones  and  a  wave  of  crime 
spreads  over  the  land  extending  from  9  p.  M.  until 
early  morning.  July  is  the  most  fatal  month  for 
dogs,  but  September  is  hardest  on  their  digestions. 
Hundreds  of  farmers'  dogs  permanently  impair 
their  health  in  September  by  eating  trousers  which 
do  not  bear  a  pure  food  label. 

In  September,  the  open  season  for  ducks,  prairie 
chickens,  and  straw  hats  begins.  Very  few  of  us 
are  able  to  assassinate  a  duck,  but  even  the  hum- 
blest citizen  can  leap  upon  a  straw  hat  on  the  first 
of  September  and  reduce  it  to  ruin  with  a  cry  of 
rage.  Because  of  the  difficulty  which  September 
usually  experiences  in  cooling  off,  it  has  been  pro- 
posed to  extend  the  closed  season  for  straw  hats  to 
the  fifteenth.  This,  however,  will  be  a  difficult 
task  and  will  not  be  accomplished  until  long  after 
the  inauguration  date  has  been  pushed  forward 
into  May. 

September  has  one  holiday,  Labor  Day.  It  is 
so  called  because  on  this  day  every  one  takes  a  rest 
and  makes  a  few  hoarse  remarks  about  capital. 


64 


OCTOBER 

OCTOBER  is  a  serious,  thoughtful  month, 
which  happens  after  September  and  just 
before  the  coal  question  becomes  intense. 
It  is  not  naturally  an  exciting  period,  but  has  been 
made  so  artificially  in  America  by  the  invention  of 
football,  the  open  season  for  hunting,  the  world's 
championship  baseball  games,  and  the  closing  of 
the  political  campaigns. 

Because  of  these  four  things,  October  produces 
more  cases  of  heart  failure,  pocketbook  failures, 
sore  throat,  broken  ribs  and  buckshot  in  the  face 
than  any  other  month,  and  rivals  July  in  the  over- 
working of  physicians. 

In  October  vegetation  closes  up  the  year's  busi- 
ness and  retires  into  winter  quarters.  The  fields 
become  brown,  and  the  summer  girl  takes  off  her 
$250  coat  of  tan  with  lemon  juice  and  writes  for 
samples  of  the  latest  society  pink.  October  usu- 
ally begins  as  coldly  as  an  emotional  actress  before 
a  small  house,  but  warms  up  by  noon  and  becomes 
rarely  and  pensively  beautiful  until  5  P.  M., 
when  dusk  begins  and  the  thermometer  begins  to 
slide  like  the  Brooklyn  baseball  team  in  July.  By 
7  o'clock  the  American  husband  is  usually  in  the 
cellar  chopping  up  an  old  chair  for  fuel.  October 

65 


OCTOBER 

is  a  frail  month  as  far  as  heat  goes,  and  has  no 
vitality  at  all. 

In  October  the  leaves  become  red  and  gold,  and 
the  sumach  flames  on  the  hills,  while  the  corn 
husker  rolls  out  at  5  A.  M.  and  picks  corn  until  his 
thumb  throbs  like  an  overdue  tooth.  The  blare  of 
the  brass  band  and  the  hoarse  shriek  of  the  orator 
shake  the  land  at  night,  while  in  the  afternoons 
the  earnest  fullback  pulls  his  knee  out  of  his  op- 
ponent's face  and  picks  the  teeth  out  of  it  with  a 
low  shriek  of  pain. 

October  is  of  no  great  use  to  humanity,  but  helps 
fill  up  the  year,  and  enables  us  to  forget  the  ap- 
proach of  winter  by  the  use  of  its  celebrated  In- 
dian summer,  which  is  a  slight  rally  of  the  fast 
sinking  thermometer  towards  the  close  of  the 
month.  Americans  should  treat  October  with 
great  respect  because  it  was  in  this  month  that 
Columbus  first  looked  upon  America  and  took  back 
his  glowing  reports  to  Spain.  Think  what  he 
might  have  said  about  it  if  he  had  found  it  in 
January I 


66 


NOVEMBER 

NOVEMBER,  a  month  which  is  introduced 
by  the  calendar  in  the  hope  of  making  it 
popular,  is  a  thirty-day  sentence  imposed 
by  Nature  on  humanity  and  served  out  principally 
under  an  umbrella. 

November  is  a  month  which  would  like  to  be- 
come winter,  but  which  hasn't  quite  got  the 
nerve.  It  is  usually  composed  of  ten  rainy  days, 
ten  cloudy  days  and  ten  snowy  days  or  freezing 
days  with  a  pinch  of  sunshine  between  the  various 
divisions.  It  is  useful  because  it  makes  December 
seem  pleasant  in  comparison. 

In  November  the  trees  finish  disrobing  and  as 
they  wave  their  bare  limbs  against  the  sky,  the 
wind  converses  through  them.  There  is  nothing 
more  talkative  than  a  November  wind.  Along 
about  10  P.  M.  on  a  bleak,  damp  night,  a  November 
wind  likes  nothing  better  than  to  come  along  and 
hang  around  the  entire  evening,  reminding  you 
that  the  rent  is  almost  due,  and  that  it  is  a  long 
time  until  spring,  and  that  Death  by  freezing  is 
particularly  sad,  and  that  unless  you  pay  your  last 
winter's  coal  bill  pretty  soon,  you  will  have  to  go 
to  bed  to  keep  warm.  A  November  wind  is  more 
pessimistic  than  anything  on  earth,  except  a  Wall 
Street  operator  during  a  spasm  of  public  honesty. 

67 


NOVEMBER 

November  was  invented  by  the  Romans,  who  did 
so  many  terrible  things  in  the  early  Christian  era. 
It  was  so  named  because  it  was  the  ninth  month  at 
that  time.  The  growth  of  business  has  compelled 
the  addition  of  two  more  months  since  then,  both 
of  them  being  of  much  better  quality. 

In  November  automobiling,  croquet  and  lawn 
socials  begin  their  long  winter's  sleep,  but  football 
is  very  popular  because  it  is  easier  to  keep  warm 
in  a  football  game  than  it  is  in  a  house  where  the 
furnace  is  being  repaired.  Football  in  November 
is  a  game  to  decide  whether  the  player  will  dent  the 
ground  or  the  ground  will  dent  the  player.  The 
ground  usually  wins.  Corn  husking  and  riding  to 
the  polls  in  an  opposition  carriage  are  also  two 
popular  outdoor  sports  during  this  month. 

There  are  three  great  uses  for  the  month  of  No- 
vember. It  kills  malaria,  flies  and  political  cam- 
paigns. None  of  these  are  able  to  survive  the 
climate  of  this  month.  If  it  were  not  for  Novem- 
ber political  campaigns  might  go  on  right  up  to 
Christmas  and  entail  vast  suffering  among  the 
rich.  Most  of  our  public  officials  are  elected  in 
November,  but  we  cannot  justly  blame  the  month 
for  this. 

November  was  first  put  prominently  on  the  map 
by  the  Pilgrim  fathers.  About  1630,  when  they 
discovered  that  there  were  only  a  few  days  of  the 
month  left,  they  instituted  a  Thanksgiving  festival, 
which  has  been  observed  ever  since  with  increased 
gratitude  and  devotion. 

68 


DECEMBER 

DECEMBER  is  a  pleasant,  steam-heated 
month  whose  principal  missions  are  to 
wind  up  the  calendar  and  the  bank  sur- 
plus. It  is  a  more  agreeable  month  than  Novem- 
ber, because  while  we  expect  the  weather  to  be  bad, 
it  is  sometimes  fine,  whereas  in  November  we  still 
hope  for  pleasant  weather  and  what  we  get  instead 
cannot  be  effectively  commented  upon  in  polite  so- 
ciety. 

In  December  man  retires  indoors  and  only  uses 
the  outside  air  while  passing  through  it  from  one 
set  of  radiators  to  another.  The  icicle  and  snow- 
ball crops  ripen  and  when  a  man  stands  on  a  street 
corner  waiting  for  the  dim  future  in  the  shape  of  a 
street  car,  he  looks  like  an  engine  with  a  leaky 
steam  pipe.  December  is  one  of  the  few  months  in 
which  the  human  breath  is  visible  and  it  is  worthy 
of  note  that  the  breath  is  always  pure  white,  no 
matter  how  it  tastes  to  the  producer.  Dark  brown 
and  sulphur  blue  exhausts  are  only  figments  of 
literature. 

In  December,  also,  the  sidewalks  begin  to  be- 
come pugnacious.  Nothing  is  more  quiet  than  a 
sidewalk  in  July  or  more  unreliable  and  blood- 
thirsty than  a  sidewalk  in  December  after  an  ice 
storm.  It  is  a  common  thing  for  a  December  side- 

69 


DECEMBER 

walk  to  approach  a  victim  stealthily  from  behind 
and  to  leap  upon  his  neck  and  shoulders  with  the 
ferocity  of  a  young  tiger.  Thousands  of  people 
have  suffered  severe  injury  by  being  attacked  by 
hostile  sidewalks  and  porch  steps  in  December. 
This  country  is  now  tolerably  free  from  wolves  and 
Indians,  but  until  the  man-eating  sidewalk  has 
been  subdued,  life  will  still  continue  to  be  sadly- 
uncertain. 

The  most  prominent  feature  of  December  is 
Christmas,  which  finally  comes  to  a  head  on  the 
25th  of  the  month.  This  festival  has  made  De- 
cember one  of  our  most  prominent  and  successful 
months.  The  younger  half  of  the  world  spends 
the  first  part  of  December  counting  the  days  until 
Christmas,  and  the  older  portion  spends  the  last 
half  of  the  month  counting  its  money  with  a 
slightly  dejected  air. 

In  December  the  days  keep  getting  shorter,  along 
with  the  people,  until  the  21st  when  winter  is  for- 
mally opened  and  the  sun  goes  to  bed  before  the 
banks  close.  The  21st  is  the  shortest  day  of  the 
year  astronomically,  but  the  26th  is  shorter  finan- 
cially by  a  tremendous  majority. 

In  December,  the  owner  of  the  automobile  wraps 
it  in  goose-grease  and  moth  balls  and  packs  it  away 
until  spring.  This  has  made  December  a  delight- 
ful month  in  many  respects,  and  has  increased 
greatly  the  esteem  in  which  it  is  held  by  pedes- 
trians. 

70 


AMERICAN  INSTITUTIONS 


CORRESPONDENCE  SCHOOLS 

A  CORRESPONDENCE  school  is  an  educa- 
tional institution  with  a  long  distance  at- 
tachment which  enables  a  man  to  stuff 
himself  with  knowledge  at  the  rate  of  two  cents  an 
ounce,  rural  free  delivery  included. 

It  is  very  easy  to  attend  a  correspondence  school. 
All  that  is  necessary  is  to  be  a  good  corre- 
spondent. A  man  need  not  be  a  careful  dresser, 
or  a  durable  end  runner,  or  a  master  with  the 
banjo,  or  a  swan-like  dancer.  He  does  not  need 
to  possess  a  chilled  steel  voice  box,  or  a  wagon  load 
of  sofa  pillows,  or  talent  for  organizing  under- 
classmen, or  an  inordinate  nocturnal  appetite  for 
pie.  All  he  needs  is  a  bushel  of  two-cent  stamps 
and  a  little  spare  time  in  the  evening.  With  this 
equipment  he  can  in  a  few  months  familiarize  him- 
self with  the  principles  of  mechanical  drawing, 
electricity,  German,  Spanish,  shoulderless  French, 
intensive  farming,  swimming  under  water,  journal- 
ism, horse  doctoring,  ship  building,  Marathon  run- 
ning, cake  designing,  skyscraper  planning,  piano 
playing,  preaching,  law,  scenario  writing,  auto 
driving,  plain  legislating,  home  plumbing,  avia- 
ting, or  hair  cutting. 

73 


CORRESPONDENCE  SCHOOLS 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  correspondence 
school  has  a  vast  curriculum.  Hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  Americans  are  attending  these  schools 
around  the  kitchen  table  at  night,  and  all  over  the 
land  worried  young  chauffeurs  are  sitting  in  mo- 
tionless automobiles  trying  to  find  out  from  a  fat 
book  how  to  get  home  in  time  for  supper. 

The  student  of  the  correspondence  school  does 
not  wear  a  hat  banged  up  in  front,  or  mysterious 
jeweled  pins,  but  he  can  easily  be  distinguished 
by  his  college  flag,  which  is  a  brunette  forefinger 
on  his  right  hand.  The  yell  of  the  correspondence 
school  is,  "Gee  whiz!  Postage  due!"  and  some 
fine  records  are  held  by  the  students,  who  make 
them  while  sprinting  for  the  last  mail  collection. 

The  correspondence  school  has  developed 
greatly,  but  it  still  lingers  behind  the  ordinary  col- 
lege in  many  important  branches  of  science.  It 
does  not  teach  lawn  tennis  or  strolling  or  debating 
or  bonfire  building  or  neophite  spanking.  It  does 
not  develop  a  taste  in  neckties  and  finances  and  in 
the  beauties  of  obtaining  money  by  mail.  The  col- 
lege sophomore  with  a  pa  who  is  susceptible  to 
good  literature  can  make  a  record  which  the  cor- 
respondent student  can  never  hope  to  approach. 


74 


PATRIOTISM 

PATRIOTISM  is  a  strange  and  mysterious 
enthusiasm  which  inspires  men  to  go  out 
on  the  battlefield  and  get  shot  into  human 
colanders  in  defense  of  their  country. 

It  also  leads  men  to  stand  up  in  public  places 
and  make  invidious  remarks  concerning  the  ad- 
ministration which  has  been  running  things  into 
the  ground.  In  the  old  days  this  proceeding  was 
as  fatal  as  the  other.  Even  in  this  day,  a  great 
many  patriots  who  have  criticised  congress  have 
been  misunderstood. 

Patriots  are  full  of  love  for  their  country  and 
will  do  almost  anything  for  it,  even  to  paying  taxes 
willingly,  though  patriots  of  this  sort  are  rare. 
Patriots  have  always  been  plentiful,  though  the 
job  is  unhealthy  and  the  pay  very  bad  as  a  rule. 
Throughout  history  patriots  have  been  busy  mak- 
ing speeches  with  the  sheriff  in  full  pursuit,  fight- 
ing armies  with  an  old  fashioned  musket,  which 
kicked  harder  than  it  shot,  and  languishing  in 
damp  and  badly  furnished  dungeons  for  years  at  a 
time.  In  the  early  days,  the  patriot  who  got 
hanged,  instead  of  being  boiled  in  oil,  considered 
himself  a  pet  of  Fortune.  However,  when  the  pa- 
triot has  died,  he  has  always  been  embalmed  in 
history  and  children  have  spoken  of  him  as  an  old 

75 


PATRIOTISM 

friend  long  after  the  rich  man  next  door  has  been 
forgotten,  even  by  his  descendants. 

David  was  one  of  the  earliest  patriots  and  suc- 
ceeded in  making  the  business  pay  handsomely 
after  great  privations.  Alfred  the  Great  was  a 
King  and  a  patriot  at  the  same  time,  which  is  usu- 
ally a  harder  job  than  to  ride  two  horses  going  in 
opposite  directions.  Bolivar,  Kosciusko  and  Gari- 
baldi had  a  hard  job  making  a  living  as  patriots, 
but  even  to-day  cigars  are  named  after  them. 
George  Washington  was  so  great  a  patriot  that 
England  offered  the  highest  market  price  for  his 
head.  But  he  retained  it  himself,  and  afterwards 
willed  it  to  a  grateful  nation  to  use  on  its  postage 
stamps. 

Even  China  has  now  accumulated  enough  pa- 
triots to  make  trouble — for  the  chief  object  of  the 
patriot  is  to  furnish  trouble.  Countries  that  have 
had  plenty  of  patriots  have  had  severe  internal 
pains,  but  have  become  mighty,  while  countries 
that  have  run  out  of  patriots,  have  slumbered 
peacefully  along  and  have  finally  gone  out  of  busi- 
ness with  heavy  liabilities. 

Nowadays  America  is  so  rich  and  powerful  that 
the  American  patriot  cannot  fight  for  his  country, 
but  must  save  it  in  other  ways. 


76 


HONESTY 

HONESTY  is  so  hard  to  define  that  most 
people  do  not  tackle  the  job  except  for 
the  benefit  of  their  neighbors. 

The  dictionary,  which  is  one  of  our  most  suc- 
cessful side-steppers,  says  "honesty  is  freedom 
from  fraud  or  guile. ' '  It  forgets  to  mention  that 
honesty  usually  means  freedom  from  money  also. 

The  proverb  says  honesty  is  the  best  policy.  It 
is  amazing  to  see  how  many  people  have  a  horror 
of  playing  policy. 

The  old  Spartans  admired  honesty  greatly. 
Stealing  was  honest  in  their  eyes,  but  getting 
caught  with  the  goods  was  a  great  crime.  The 
ever  recurring  bribery  investigations  have  re- 
vealed the  fact  that  the  United  States  ia  full  of 
Spartans. 

Some  men  are  so  honest  that  they  will  not  steal 
a  man's  money  so  long  as  they  can  get  it  by  selling 
him  stock  in  a  defunct  gold  mine.  Other  men 
would  shudder  with  horror  at  the  thought  of  sell- 
ing decayed  mining  stock,  when  the  same  results 
can  be  obtained  in  a  perfectly  legal  manner  by 
borrowing  the  money  and  going  into  bankruptcy 
with  no  visible  assets. 

Many  men  are  so  honest  that  they  will  not  steal 
a  pin.  But  they  would  hold  the  coat  of  a  personal 

77 


HONESTY 

friend  while  he  stole  a  battleship.  Still  others  de- 
cline to  steal  anything  at  all,  preferring  to  leave 
the  job  to  litigation,  which  usually  gives  excellent 
satisfaction. 

There  are  also  men  with  whom  you  could  trust 
your  watch  with  perfect  safety,  but  who  would 
take  a  stock  company  away  from  you  with  a  merry 
laugh. 

Some  men  are  honest  in  small  things,  because 
there  is  no  profit  in  piker  pilfering.  Others  are 
honest  in  large  things,  because  there  is  less  risk  in 
small  packages. 

Thus  it  is  to  be  seen  plainly  that  the  standards 
of  honesty  vary  as  widely  as  plurality  guesses  by 
leaders  of  opposite  parties.  Standards  vary  in 
legislatures  also.  In  some  the  members  are  so 
honest  that  they  will  only  sell  their  votes  for  polit- 
ical support.  In  others  the  members  will  not  ac- 
cept money  and  would  indignantly  return  the 
bundles  they  find  in  their  pockets  if  they  had  time 
and  could  remember  to  do  it.  In  still  others,  when 
a  member  doesn't  pawn  his  desk  and  chair,  he  runs 
for  reelection  on  his  good  record. 

It  will  not  do  for  us  to  judge  the  honesty  of 
others  by  our  own — for  others  are  judging  our 
honesty  by  theirs  and  are  looking  at  us  with  horror 
as  they  do  so. 


78 


NEUTRALITY 

ABOUT  the  most  valuable  and  difficult  art 
in  the  world  to-day  is  that  of  maintaining 
neutrality. 

Neutrality  consists  of  remaining  so  sympatheti- 
cally fair-minded  between  two  or  more  belligerent 
nations  that  the  said  nations  will  not  be  inspired 
to  step  over  and  hand  the  bystanding  country  a 
few  hearty  pokes. 

This  is  somewhat  harder  than  walking  over 
Niagara  Falls  on  a  tight  wire  but  not  so  hard  as 
balancing  on  the  end  of  a  feather.  After  a  diplo- 
matic corps  has  maintained  neutrality  with  a  few 
hostile  nations  yammering  on  either  side  and  in- 
quiring what  it  meant  by  coaling  this  cruiser  and 
ejecting  that  one,  the  members  of  said  corps 
usually  retire  to  a  rest  cure  for  a  few  months. 

When  France  and  England  were  at  war  in  the 
first  breadths  of  the  last  century,  the  United  States 
maintained  neutrality  for  a  few  years  but  finally 
went  to  war  for  relief. 

During  the  Civil  War,  England  maintained  neu- 
trality by  fitting  out  Confederate  cruisers  and 
ejecting  the  United  States  merchant  marine  from 
the  seas.  The  United  States  got  $15,000,000  for 
this  bum  and  spurious  brand  of  neutrality,  but 
the  merchant  marine  never  came  back — which 

79 


NEUTRALITY 

made  the  affair  a  great  bargain  for  Great  Britain. 

Neutrality  has  been  a  specialty  of  Switzerland, 
and  it  has  stood  successfully  on  the  side  lines  for 
650  years.  This  has  been  easy  for  it,  however,  be- 
cause it  would  take  a  mighty  determined  enemy  to 
climb  up  into  the  1100th  story  of  Switzerland  and 
bust  its  neutrality. 

The  United  States  is  now  a  strictly  neutral  coun- 
try, full  of  Germans,  Irish,  French  and  Slavs,  who 
are  about  as  neutral  when  they  get  together  as  two 
black  tom-cats  are  on  a  roof.  We  will  not  have 
much  trouble  in  preserving  an  unblemished  fair- 
ness to  all  the  principals  in  any  by-war,  but  if  we 
can  keep  our  adopted  citizens  from  massacring 
each  other  every  time  a  foreign  war  breaks  out, 
we  will  be  performing  a  great  feat. 


80 


PRIDE 

PRIDE  is  a  genteel  paralysis  of  the  brain, 
accompanied  by  a  marked  stiffening  of  the 
backbone,  to  say  nothing  of  the  neck. 

When  a  man  has  pride  he  has  to  reason  around 
it.  This  lands  him  in  a  great  many  peculiar 
places.  Many  a  man  is  borrowing  money  from 
friends  who  can't  afford  to  lend  it  because  he  is 
too  proud  to  beg.  It  is  much  easier  for  a  proud 
man  to  die  owing  money  profusely  than  to  stain  his 
record  by  asking  the  county  to  slip  him  a  load  of 
coal. 

Pride  also  compels  many  people  to  give  up  com- 
fortable old  friends  who  have  failed  to  make  the  In- 
come Tax  Club  and  to  devote  their  attention  ex- 
clusively to  acquaintances  in  the  set  ahead.  There 
is  nothing  more  pathetic  than  the  sight  of  a  proud 
person  laboriously  enjoying  the  friendship  of  a 
circle  of  people  who  would  say  " Indeed"  if  his 
death  were  to  be  announced  and  who  would  in- 
quire his  initials  when  sending  flowers  to  the 
funeral. 

Pride  keeps  a  vast  number  of  Englishmen  idle 
all  of  their  lives  and  renders  them  slightly  less  use- 
ful than  chinch  bugs,  because  an  Englishman  who 

81 


PRIDE 

is  suffering  from  pride  in  its  last  stages  would 
rather  die  than  to  work  himself.  When  we  con- 
sider that  this  sort  of  pride  enables  a  man  to  spend 
twenty  years  waiting  impatiently  for  some  mem- 
ber of  the  family  to  die  and  pass  on  the  estate,  and 
that  this  amateur  undertaking  and  embalming 
profession  is  considered  to  be  above  that  of  supply- 
ing the  prosperity  of  a  nation,  we  feel  justified  in 
believing  that  pride  is  used  in  many  cases  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  brains. 

Pride  causes  statesmen  to  take  orders  from 
bosses  in  order  to  hang  onto  the  honors  of  office, 
and  it  makes  families  owe  the  butcher  and  baker 
with  great  skill  and  tenacity  in  order  to  support  an 
automobile  and  honk  down  upon  piking  pedestrians 
who  pay  their  bills.  If  it  were  possible  to  oper- 
ate for  pride  the  world  would  be  better  and  hap- 
pier— but  not  half  as  entertaining  to  those  on  the 
sidelines. 


82 


"PULLS" 

THERE  are  some  prizes  in  this  country 
which  are  not  gotten  by  "Push."  These 
are  obtained  by  *  *  Pulls. ' ' 

A  "pull'5  is  a  mysterious,  natural  force  which 
takes  the  place  of  muscle,  brains,  industry  or 
ability  and  produces  equally  satisfactory  results 
to  the  possessor.  It  is  the  best  utility  player  in 
the  political  game  and  bats  over  300  in  business, 
the  drama  and  society. 

Having  a  "pull"  means  having  a  friend  in 
power,  who  is  willing  to  act  as  a  steam  windlass 
for  you.  When  a  man  with  a  "pull"  desires  any- 
thing from  an  office  to  a  divorce,  he  attaches  him- 
self to  the  object  and  his  powerful  friend  hooks  on, 
and  pulls  until  the  prize  is  dislodged.  A  "pull" 
can  haul  a  man  over  more  talented  candidates  into 
a  government  position.  It  can  secure  him  a  city 
contract  on  the  highest  bid.  It  can  get  him  out 
of  the  police  station  without  a  fine,  after  he  has 
run  his  automobile  through  a  flock  of  school  chil- 
dren at  full  speed.  It  can  get  a  ship  canal  in  his 
district,  although  ships  would  have  to  come  many 
miles  on  wheels  to  play  in  it;  and  it  will  get  a 
beautiful  lady  a  job  as  star  in  a  theatrical  com- 

83 


"  PULLS" 

pany,  before  she  has  learned  how  to  dodge  the  drop 
curtain. 

It  is  estimated  that  over  one  billion  donkey 
power  is  being  exerted  in  pulls  in  this  country 
every  day.  But  nowadays  there  is  always  some 
officious  cuss  who  is  sure  to  come  around  and  cut 
the  rope,  just  as  the  pull  is  being  exerted.  Re- 
formers are  death  on  "pulls."  Nothing  delights 
a  reformer  so  much  as  to  bisect  a  pull,  just  at  the 
critical  point,  and  to  watch  the  indignant  woe  of 
the  fly-sized  pullee  who  was  just  about  to  be  hauled 
into  an  eagle-sized  job. 

A  "pull"  is  a  wonderful  thing,  but  there  are 
some  feats  which  it  cannot  perform.  It  cannot 
get  a  man  on  the  world's  series  team.  It  cannot 
get  poetry  read  after  it  is  one  hundred  years  old. 
It  cannot  cure  dyspepsia,  and  it  cannot  induce  an 
icy  sidewalk  to  lie  quiet  and  docile,  while  an  im- 
portant personage  is  passing  over  it.  A  big 
"pull"  will  haul  a  man  higher  up  than  a  little 
push,  but  the  altitude  isn't  half  so  permanent,  for 
the  pullee  never  knows  when  the  man  at  the  other 
end  of  the  rope  is  going  to  let  go  to  spit  on  his 
hands. 


HOSPITALITY 

HOSPITALITY  is  the  art  of  convincing  a 
guest  that  he  is  conferring  a  great  favor 
on  you  by  giving  you  a  chance  to  enter- 
tain him  on  his  own  terms. 

Some  people  are  so  expert  in  hospitality  that 
their  guests  tremble  as  they  leave  to  think  of  the 
desolation  they  will  cause  by  going.  Others  are 
so  awkward  at  the  game  that  after  they  have  en- 
tertained a  guest  half  an  hour,  he  will  trip  over  a 
stool  and  break  a  leg  if  necessary  in  order  to  get 
away. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  hospitality.  Some 
people  believe  in  stuffing  it  down  the  gullets  of 
their  guest  until  he  bulges  at  the  seams.  Great 
cruelties  are  often  performed  in  this  manner  by 
hearty  eaters,  who  catch  a  thin  and  dyspeptic 
guest,  make  him  eat  fifteen  selections  with  encores, 
and  then  assault  him  with  pie  at  the  end  of  the 
meal.  Other  hosts  resort  to  entertainment  to 
show  their  hospitality  and  talk  to  their  guests 
faithfully  and  maddeningly.  There  is  nothing 
that  will  make  a  guest  yearn  more  soulfully  for  a 
spiked  club  than  to  be  led  into  a  library  full  of 
fascinating  books  and  magazines,  and  talked  to  in 
relays  for  three  hours  by  an  entire  family  of  hosts, 

85 


HOSPITALITY 

none  of  whom  has  enough  interesting  information 
to  round  out  a  complete  sentence. 

Still  other  hosts  rely  entirely  upon  their  native 
cities  and  tow  their  guests  about  them  with  great 
energy,  showing  them  the  union  depot,  the  water 
tower,  the  courthouse,  the  nine-story  office  build- 
ing, the  village  millionaire  and  other  inspiring 
sights. 

But  hospitality  doesn't  consist  of  a  good  cook  or 
a  full  flow  of  conversation,  or  a  pair  of  agile  and 
persevering  feet.  It  varies,  in  fact,  with  every 
guest.  First  size  up  your  guest  and  then  pre- 
scribe for  him.  You  can  talk  old  times  with  one 
man  and  send  him  away  glowing  with  affection. 
For  the  second  guest  you  may  have  to  depend  on 
tender  beefsteak,  while  if  you  will  sit  quietly  and 
allow  the  third  guest  to  do  all  the  talking,  he  will 
wring  your  hand  at  leaving  and  tell  you  that  for 
hospitality  you  have  the  F.  F.  V.'s  looking  like 
hotel  clerks.  It  is  not  hard  to  size  up  a  guest  and 
decide  what  brand  of  hospitality  to  hand  out  to 
him.  Forty  or  fifty  years  of  practice  will  quite 
often  make  one  fairly  proficient  in  the  art. 

Some  hospitality  is  very  fine  like  silk,  but  wears 
out  in  a  few  days.  Other  hospitality  is  almost 
perpetual.  Young  women  are  fragile  things,  but 
are  equipped  with  hospitality  of  almost  deadly 
durability,  entertaining  their  school  friends  for 
months  at  a  time  with  the  utmost  fortitude. 


86 


THE  BANANA 

THE  banana  is  a  soft,  delicious  fruit  about 
the  size  of  a  policeman's  billy.  It  comes 
in  bunches  like  trouble  and  has  made  it 
possible  for  the  Italian  race  to  prosper  in  America. 

Bananas  can  now  be  purchased  in  this  country 
wherever  the  nickel  can  be  found.  But  forty 
years  ago,  they  were  a  great  rarity  and  people 
gathered  together  around  a  banana  for  the  privi- 
lege of  peeling  it  and  taking  adventurous  bites.  It 
grows  in  the  tropics  and  consists  of  a  large  plant 
with  extensive  leaves  and  a  stalk  in  the  middle 
which  produces,  when  kindly  treated,  a  bunch  of 
bananas  each  year  and  sometimes  throws  in  a 
tarantula  or  a  small  snake  for  good  measure. 

The  banana  is  picked  when  green,  but  when  kept 
long  enough  becomes  tender  and  melting.  It  is  al- 
most as  nutritious  as  beef,  and  in  Africa  has 
formed  both  dinner  and  dessert  for  millions  of 
people  ever  since  Africa  was  founded  by  Nature. 

In  this  country,  the  banana  is  still  rated  as  a 
delicacy  and  is  principally  used  by  travelers  to 
stave  off  starvation  on  way  trains,  and  by  small 
boys  to  combine  pleasure  and  excitement.  With 
five  cents'  worth  of  bananas  a  small  boy  can  eat 
himself  into  a  warped  and  distended  state  and  can 

87 


THE  BANANA 

also  carpet  a  large  section  of  sidewalk  with  the 
discarded  skins.  Stepping  on  a  banana  skin  is  one 
of  the  most  disconcerting  things  that  can  happen 
in  this  country.  Nothing  can  floor  a  man  so 
quickly  except  possibly  a  letter  which  he  once 
wrote  to  a  trusted  friend  before  he  thought  of  run- 
ning for  office. 

Americans  now  own  millions  of  acres  of  banana 
plantations  in  Central  America  and  large  fleets  of 
steamers  are  employed  to  bring  the  crop  to  this 
country.  The  banana  can  also  be  dried  and 
ground  into  flour.  Some  day  all  the  jungle  be- 
tween Mexico  City  and  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  will 
be  transformed  into  banana  plantations  and  the 
Italian  peasant  who  now  eats  black  bread  for 
seventy  years  and  then  dies  with  a  sigh  of  relief, 
will  be  able  to  enjoy  bananas  without  emigrating 
to  this  country  and  selling  them  for  a  living. 


88 


MUD 

MUD  is  earth  which  has  been  put  in  soak 
by  nature. 
Mud  is  the  most  valuable  thing  in  the 
world.    After  earth  has  been  mud  for  a  while  it 
produces  crops,  without  which  mankind  would  curl 
up  and  die  like  a  baby  sparrow  on  a  hot  doorstep. 

However,  since  man  does  not  raise  crops  on  the 
country  roads  he  has  no  particular  use  for  mud 
in  that  particular  spot. 

All  over  the  central  part  of  this  nation  the  coun- 
try roads  are  paved  with  mud.  Mud  makes  the 
worst  pavement  in  the  world.  A  five-mile  mud 
pavement  in  March  is  as  effective  as  a  two-inch  oak 
jail  door  for  keeping  a  farmer  at  home.  There 
are  hundreds  of  millions  of  bushels  of  grain  on  the 
farms  of  America  in  the  early  spring,  but  they  do 
not  have  much  effect  upon  the  cost  of  living,  be- 
cause they  are  separated  from  the  market  by  sev- 
eral miles  of  roads  which  clasp  the  farm  wagons 
to  their  bosom  with  a  glad  gurgle  and  refuse  to  re- 
lease them  until  three  teams  are  hitched  on. 

Wherever  mud  is  used  for  making  roads  the 
farmer  sells  his  grain  when  the  roads  are  firmest 
instead  of  when  the  market  is  firmest. 

89 


MUD 

American  mud  is  extremely  useless  on  the  coun- 
try roads.  It  is  even  more  useless  on  the  city 
streets.  It  is  hard  to  work  up  a  worry  over  the 
fact  that  the  American  business  man  does  not  wor- 
ship old  masters  and  broken  nosed  statuary.  But 
it  is  easy  to  become  distressed  over  the  aesthetic 
taste  of  a  man  who  will  wade  down  town  ankle 
deep  in  last  winter's  mud  all  spring,  without  call- 
ing around  at  the  city  hall  with  a  rope  and  plead- 
ing to  be  allowed  to  hang  the  administration. 

The  efficiency  of  American  city  government  can 
be  measured  in  some  ways  by  the  amount  of  mud 
on  the  American  city  street.  If  the  streets  are 
profusely  decorated  with  mud,  some  of  it  will  al- 
most certainly  get  upon  the  reputations  of  the 
aldermen  before  very  long. 


90 


CHAUTAUQUAS 

ACHAUTAUQUA  is  an  institution  of 
learning  which  uses  everyday  fresh  air 
instead  of  college  atmosphere.  The  first 
Chautauqua  was  founded  by  one  of  the  first  fresh 
air  cranks.  He  believed  that  a  series  of  lectures 
delivered  in  a  comfortable  camp  would  tone  down 
the  horrors  of  acquiring  an  education  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  many  middle  aged  people,  who  would  be 
run  over  and  seriously  stepped  on  if  they  got  on 
a  college  campus,  would  eagerly  soak  up  learning 
if  obtained  at  a  popular  price  of  admission. 

This  proved  to  be  the  case  and  the  original 
Chautauqua  is  still  attended  by  many  thousands 
who  live  happily  by  the  lake  side  at  Chautauqua, 
New  York,  during  the  summer,  perfecting  them- 
selves in  art,  literature,  philosophy,  stenography, 
crocheting,  burnt-wooding,  brass  hammering, 
basket  weaving  and  other  branches  of  wisdom. 

The  Chautauqua  has  become  so  popular  that  it 
now  spreads  all  over  the  country  like  a  light  rash, 
beginning  in  June  and  continuing  until  the  nights 
cool  off.  All  that  is  needed  to  pull  off  a  Chau- 
tauqua is  a  large  tent,  some  pine  seats  and  plenty 
of  " talent."  " Talent"  is  sold  by  the  lecture  bu- 
reaus and  comes  in  $50,  $100,  $500  and  $1,000  lots. 

91 


CHAUTAUQUAS 

A  plain  orator  can  be  secured  for  $50 — an  orator 
with  a  press  agent  for  $100.  Ordinary  con- 
gressmen bring  $200  if  lively,  and  governors  and 
senators  of  the  first  grade  get  $500.  The  highest 
class  of  talent  gets  $1,000  a  night  and  consists  of 
great  ministers,  great  curiosities  and  William  J. 
Bryan. 

The  Chautauqua  has  usurped  the  place  of  base- 
ball in  our  small  towns  and  has  become  the  pre- 
vailing summer  amusement.  Every  year  25,000,- 
000  American  people  coagulate  under  tents  to 
listen  to  ministers,  educators,  humorists,  jubilee 
singers,  string  bands,  politicians,  monologists,  re- 
vivalists, impersonators,  authors,  explorers  and 
brass  bands  and  to  absorb  from  them  enough  wis- 
dom to  last  through  another  long,  hard  winter. 

Chautauquas  are  very  beneficial  to  the  nation, 
but  it  has  been  recently  noticed  that  the  senator 
who  has  knocked  down  another  senator  can  usually 
command  a  higher  price  in  the  Chautauqua  circuit 
afterwards  and  that  the  explorer  who  has  com- 
puted his  diary  with  a  false  horizon  made  by  the 
aid  of  a  basin  of  water  drawn  from  a  Los  Angeles 
faucet  gets  more  money  for  telling  what  he  doesn't 
know  than  a  scientist  who  never  got  any  free  ad- 
vertising. 

These  facts  are  dimming  the  glory  of  the  Chau- 
tauqua to  some  extent. 


92 


AMERICAN  INVENTIONS 


FLATS 

FLATS  are  an  invention  whereby  people 
who  live  in  crowded  cities  can  be  piled  up 
in  layers  like  pancakes. 

A  flat  consists  of  a  collection  of  living  rooms  all 
on  one  floor.  A  flat  building  consists  of  from  six 
to  sixty  sets  of  rooms  all  under  one  roof  and  under 
the  overlordship  of  a  janitor  who  lives  in  the  base- 
ment and  doses  the  furnace  with  coal  on  the 
homeopathic  plan.  A  really  expert  janitor  can 
run  a  twelve  flat  furnace  all  winter  on  a  wagon  load 
of  coal  and  can  so  chill  the  tenants  when  they  come 
down  to  complain,  that  their  rooms  will  seem 
tropical  when  they  return  to  them. 

Flats  are  built  of  brick,  wood,  stone,  strawboard, 
felt  and  tissue  paper,  the  latter  being  used  princi- 
pally for  partitions.  An  economically  built  flat 
building  is  usually  provided  with  a  light  well 
which  is  entirely  filled  with  conversation.  By 
means  of  this  well  the  occupant  of  the  top  flat  can 
hear  what  the  husband  of  the  first  floor  says  when 
the  coffee  doesn't  suit  him  and  when  the  woman 
in  Number  2  tells  her  late  returning  spouse  that 
he  is  a  brute,  the  women  in  Numbers  1,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7, 
and  8  quiver  with  simultaneous  indignation. 

Flats  have  handsome  hallways  fitted  with  New 

95 


FLATS 

Jersey  Turkish  rugs,  and  back  porches  where  one 
may  have  a  garden  consisting  of  a  geranium. 
They  are  also  provided  with  bathtubs  and  two 
kinds  of  water,  cold  and  not  so  cold.  In  the  cities, 
owing  to  the  high  price  of  ground,  aldermen  and 
building  material,  the  rooms  in  a  flat  are  some- 
times very  small — so  small  that  when  the  daughter 
is  playing  the  piano,  the  mother  has  to  wash  the 
dishes  gently  for  fear  of  splashing  on  the  music — 
so  small  that  the  members  of  the  family  have  to  be 
measured  for  the  bedrooms  as  they  would  for 
vests,  and  any  one  weighing  over  180  pounds  has 
to  work  himself  into  the  bathroom  by  means  of 
glove  powder  and  a  shoe  horn. 

Some  flats  are  very  magnificent,  however,  and 
contain  splendid  marble  lobbies,  sun  parlors,  air 
filters,  vacuum  cleaners,  automobile  elevators,  re- 
frigerated bedrooms  and  even  places  where  chil- 
dren and  dogs  can  be  stored  if  they  are  kept  per- 
fectly quiet.  Such  flats  rent  for  from  $5,000  to 
$50,000  a  year  which,  however,  does  not  include  the 
privilege  of  gossiping  with  the  family  next  door. 

By  means  of  flats  people  can  live  with  little  exer- 
tion and  great  comfort,  to  say  nothing  of  perfect 
seclusion.  No  one  will  bother  them,  and  when 
they  are  at  last  lowered  from  the  fourth  floor  to  the 
hearse  after  a  long  and  peaceful  life,  the  neighbors 
of  twenty  years'  standing  will  heave  a  sigh  and 
say:  "Hello,  I  wonder  what  poor  devil  is  being 
planted  to-day?" 


96 


MOVING  PICTURES 

ONE  day  Edison  caught  sight  of  the 
camera  which  had  hitherto  had  an  easy 
time,  but  from  that  moment  it  was 
doomed.  Edison  harnessed  it  up  with  a  set  of 
gears  and  a  revolving  shutter,  and  set  it  to  work 
photographing  speed,  history,  romance,  humor  and 
travel. 

As  soon  as  this  was  done  moving  pictures  be- 
came enormously  popular.  The  moving  picture 
theater  immediately  leaped  into  being  and  began 
to  compete  with  the  street  car  and  the  cigar  store 
for  the  nickels  of  the  populace.  In  consequence, 
the  limited  supply  of  five  cent  pieces  became  so 
overworked  that  a  nickel  which  doesn't  register  at 
three  tills  each  day  is  loafing  on  its  job. 

Moving  pictures  are  making  us  acquainted  with 
the  world  and  familiar  with  the  great  men  of  all 
times.  The  scenery  of  Java,  Sahara  and  Siberia 
are  chestnuts  to  us,  though  we  may  never  have 
traveled  100  miles  on  a  railroad  train.  For  five 
cents  we  can  see  King  Solomon  quarrel  with  fifty 
wives,  in  colors.  We  have  seen  so  many  battle- 
ships launched,  kings  crowned  and  buried,  tigers 
shot,  highwaymen  treed,  pugilists  demolished  and 
mountain  peaks  scaled,  that  most  of  us  are  ex- 
tremely blase,  and  the  trees  on  the  streets  would 

97 


MOVING  PICTURES 

have  to  walk  off  arm  in  arm  to  get  more  than  a 
yawn  out  of  us.  This  the  trees  will  never  actually 
do,  but  they  are  likely  to  do  anything  on  a  mov- 
ing picture  film  which  is  a  great  assistance  to  Na- 
ture, sometimes. 

In  moving  pictures  we  may  also  see  ferocious 
Indians  chasing  the  brave  hero  down  a  macadam 
road  and  barbecuing  him  against  a  trolley  pole; 
likewise  we  may  discover  the  temperamental  cow- 
boys capturing  a  horse-stealing  Mexican  and 
lynching  him  in  the  wilderness  around  the  corner 
from  a  hat  factory  in  New  Jersey.  This  teaches 
us  not  to  believe  all  the  moving  pictures  tell  us. 
It  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  accomplished  of  liars. 
It  is  possible  in  a  moving  picture  factory  to  make 
a  magnificent  and  awe-inspiring  volcano  out  of  a 
pile  of  sand,  a  roman  candle  and  some  soapsuds. 

More  people  are  watching  moving  pictures  to- 
day than  are  watching  chorus  girls,  which  is  a  sign 
that  the  world  is  getting  better.  The  picture  melo- 
drama is  not  a  brain  strengthener  but  it  is  an  im- 
provement over  the  old  "ten,  twent',  thirty'  va- 
riety because  the  audience  cannot  hear  the  re- 
marks of  the  characters.  Moving  pictures  have 
been  taken  of  practically  everything  in  the  world 
including  the  pyramids  and  Washington's  monu- 
ment, but  no  one  has  taken  a  moving  picture  of  a 
baggageman  accommodating  a  crowd  of  hurried 
passengers.  A  standing  or  even  sitting  picture 
can  handle  this  subject  perfectly. 

98 


THE  TIN  CAN 

THE  tin  can  is  a  humble  and  homely  thing, 
but  as  a  friend  of  man,  it  beats  the  dog  all 
hollow,  and  is  a  strong  rival  of  the  horse. 

When  the  tin  can  is  filled  with  early  June  peas, 
or  July  corn,  or  Michigan  peaches,  or  New  Eng- 
land succotash,  it  mitigates  the  horror  of  winter 
to  an  enormous  extent. 

The  man  who  discovered  how  to  can  food  has 
been  one  of  the  benefactors  of  his  race.  He  has 
made  it  possible  for  the  explorer,  the  prospector 
and  the  railroad  surveyor  to  push  on  into  track- 
less wastes,  living  on  canned  goods,  and  retracing 
their  steps  back  to  civilization  by  means  of  the 
empty  cans. 

In  all  parts  of  the  world  the  tin  can  is  the  sign 
of  civilization.  The  sands  of  the  Sahara  may  be 
trackless  and  unbroken,  but  if  a  pile  of  extinct  and 
dejected  tin  cans  is  discovered,  it  is  a  sign  that 
man  has  been  there,  and  has  passed  on. 

Man  has  explored  Australia  and  the  Chinese  des- 
erts with  the  help  of  tin  cans.  He  has  left  empty 
bean  cans  in  Madagascar,  preserved  pear  cans  in 
Thibet,  and  Chili  con  carne  cans  under  the  eaves  of 
the  North  Pole.  He  has  made  life  in  Alaska  en- 


THE  TIN  CAN 

durable  with  the  aid  of  a  can  opener,  while  the  un- 
tamed native  of  Africa  eats  American  string  beans 
and  sweet  potatoes,  decorates  his  ankles  with  the 
empty  cans,  and  plasters  himself  with  the  nine- 
colored  labels. 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  profitable  to  raise 
only  so  much  vegetables  and  fruit  as  could  be  at 
once  interred  in  the  human  stomach.  Nowadays, 
however,  most  of  the  crop  is  put  in  cans.  Each 
year  the  ingenious  canner  discovers  a  method  of 
canning  something  new.  Everything  that  grows 
in  America  and  almost  everything  that  can  be 
killed  and  boiled  is  now  canned,  but  there  is  a  vast 
field  in  other  continents.  There  is  no  reason  why 
canned  haggis,  whale  steak  and  elephant's  foot 
cannot  be  added  to  American  bills  of  fare.  We 
are  keeping  far-off  people  from  starving  with 
American  prunes  and  pumpkins,  and  should  be  al- 
lowed to  buy  walrus  flipper  and  polar  bear  steak 
at  the  grocery  stores  in  return. 


100 


WASH  DAY 

WASH  day  is  another  of  the  grand  old 
American  institutions  which  is  being 
badly  dented  by  the  relentless  hoof  of 
progress  and  our  changing  civilization. 

It  was  once  a  solemn  and  alarming  institution — 
half  way  between  a  volcano  and  a  famine.  Clouds 
of  steam  rolled  up  from  the  basement  into  the 
stricken  house.  The  rough  grating  sound  of 
knuckles  being  worn  off  on  the  washboard  and  the 
low,  strangling  murmur  of  the  mother,  trying  to 
reprove  three  children  with  her  mouth  full  of 
clothes  pins,  brought  sadness  to  father  as  he  sat  at 
the  dinner  table  eating  a  cold  potato  of  yesterday's 
publication,  and  sustaining  life  with  the  thought 
that  to-morrow  would  be  ironing  day  and  that  if 
he  wanted  any  dinner  he  could  fry  himself  an  egg. 

Those  were  grand  old  times,  but  they  are  rapidly 
passing  away.  Wash  day  is  now  no  more  serious 
than  an  ordinary  attack  of  measles  in  the  family. 
Nowadays  mother  stuffs  the  washing  machine  full 
of  dirty  clothes  on  Monday  morning,  turns  on  the 
electric  current,  and  telephones  the  power  house  to 
have  the  firemen  keep  up  the  current,  as  she  wants 
to  get  through  in  time  to  go  to  the  club  in  the  after- 
noon. 

101 


WASH  BAY 

Niagara  Falls  now  washes  most  of  the  clothes  in 
Buffalo,  New  York,  and  if  it  ever  has  a  backache  it 
doesn't  mention  the  fact.  It  not  only  washes 
them,  but  it  wrings  them  and  irons  them — and  if  it 
tears  any  of  them  in  the  process  it  turns  the  sew- 
ing machine  until  mother  sews  them  up. 

The  number  of  laundresses  who  call  for  the 
clothes  in  an  automobile  is  growing  each  month  by 
leaps  and  bounds. 

The  modern  hired  girl  does  not  ask  "How  many 
in  the  family  please?"  She  asks:  "Have  you  a 
washing  machine  that  will  turn  on  with  a  switch?" 
And  now-days  the  young  man  who  pulls  a  diamond 
ring  from  his  pocket  and  asks  a  young  lady  to 
trudge  with  him  through  life,  is  giving  way  to  the 
future  husband  who  pulls  the  ground  plan  of  a 
downstairs  laundry  on  his  frail  young  sweetheart, 
and  asks  her  if  she  thinks  she  loves  him  enough  to 
hang  out  the  clothes,  if  the  local  electric  light  trust 
or  water  company  will  do  the  rest. 

One  reason  why  woman  is  demanding  the  vote 
with  more  and  more  fury  is  because  she  isn't  so 
extinct  on  Tuesdays  as  she  used  to  be  when  wash 
day  was  a  gymnasium  with  turkish  bath  attach- 
ments. 


102 


BKASS  BANDS 

A  BRASS  band  is  a  large  number  of  dis- 
turbances merged  into  one  harmonious 
and  jambangsome  whole. 

Nothing  illustrates  more  vividly  the  benefits  of 
union.  A  trombone  played  alone  on  the  streets 
would  be  a  nuisance.  A  cornet  is  a  crime  against 
an  entire  neighborhood.  No  one  would  go  four 
feet  to  hear  a  bass  drum  by  itself  unless  there  was 
a  chance  to  kick  it  in.  People  go  out  of  their  way 
to  throw  bricks  at  a  clarionet  when  it  is  in  full  cry 
alone.  Yet  when  these  instruments  are  all  played 
together  in  a  band  with  a  drum  major  attachment 
business  suspends,  windows  open  to  catch  the  di- 
vine melody  and  small  boys  follow  the  players 
from  Main  Street  until  past  dinner  time. 

The  brass  band  is  one  of  our  most  useful  institu- 
tions. Without  brass  bands  we  could  not  have 
circuses,  presidential  inaugurations  or  large  fu- 
nerals, and  political  campaigns  would  be  sadly 
crippled.  A  street  parade  without  a  brass  band 
would  be  as  aimless  and  melancholy  as  a  garter 
snake  without  a  head.  Ambition  without  brass 
bands  would  die,  for  what  would  be  the  use  of  glory 
if  there  were  no  brass  band  to  welcome  the  suc- 
cessful candidate  back  to  his  native  town? 

Brass  bands  are  of  six  grades,  good,  bad,  unen- 

103 


BRASS  BANDS 

durable,  horrible,  atrocious  and  worse.  There 
are  only  a  few  of  the  first  grade,  but  almost  every 
small  town  has  a  band  of  the  sixth  grade.  It  is 
composed  of  earnest  young  musicians  who  meet  in 
a  lodge  hall  every  Saturday  night  and  practice 
while  the  inhabitants  stuff  cracks  in  the  doors  and 
windows  and  put  on  tight  shoes  to  divert  their 
minds.  Many  a  time  Death  has  paused  over  a 
small  town  to  take  toll,  but  as  he  has  listened  to  a 
fourteen  fragment  band  rolling  through  "  Poet  and 
Peasant"  in  a  heavy  sea,  the  cornets  four  beats  in 
the  lead,  with  the  clarionets  and  alto  horns  catching 
up  fast,  and  the  brass  horn  fast  on  a  bar  and  send- 
ing up  distress  signals,  he  has  shuddered  and 
passed  on. 

No  one  should  object  to  band  practice  because 
there  can  be  no  good  bands  unless  the  closed  season 
on  bad  bands  is  religiously  observed.  But  the 
scale  of  prices  for  bands  is  not  managed  right.  It 
is  all  right  for  a  band  to  charge  $50  per  perform- 
ance after  it  has  learned  to  play  unanimously  in 
one  key.  But  before  that  time  the  citizens  of  the 
town  in  which  it  practices  should  be  allowed  to 
charge  25  cents  per  practice.  This  would  stop  the 
steady  loss  of  population  in  the  small  towns  and 
would  stop  the  drift  to  the  cities  to  a  marked  de- 
gree. 


104 


CLOSETS 

CLOSETS  are  small  compartments  built  in 
houses  for  the  purpose  of  concealing 
clothes,  shoes,  skeletons,  naughty  chil- 
dren and  bad  housekeeping. 

Closets  are  not  important  to  men,  because  they 
are  not  allowed  to  use  them.  But  they  mean 
everything  to  women.  A  home  may  have  a  poor 
furnace,  leaky  roof  and  a  rheumatic  system  of 
plumbing,  but  if  it  has  two  large  closets  in  each 
room,  a  woman  will  rent  it  with  a  cry  of  joy,  and 
will  live  happily  in  it  until  she  can  find  some  house 
which  is  nine  blocks  from  the  street  car,  but  has 
one  more  closet  and  a  window  in  it  at  that. 

Closets  are  very  useful,  because  they  keep  rooms 
so  clean  and  orderly,  and  closet  doors  are  useful, 
because  they  can  be  shut  and  locked,  thus  keeping 
reckless  husbands  from  wandering  into  the  closets 
and  getting  lost.  Husbands  are  the  greatest 
drawbacks  to  closets  anyway.  A  husband  is  for- 
ever trying  to  break  into  a  beautiful,  large  closet 
and  hang  a  pair  of  pants  in  it.  Marriages  would 
be  happier  if  husbands  were  more  considerate  in 
this  regard.  Only  the  other  day  in  Seattle,  a  man 
who  had  always  been  considered  kind  and  noble, 
broke  into  a  beautiful  closet  and  misplaced  eleven 

105 


CLOSETS 

skirts,  nine  waists,  four  hat  boxes,  18  pairs  of 
shoes,  a  seal  skin  coat,  three  muffs,  a  feather  boa, 
and  an  opera  cape  while  trying  to  find  a  vest ;  and 
the  vest  wasn't  there,  either.  His  wife  had  given 
it  to  the  Salvation  Army  long  ago.  A  good  many 
closets  are  supposed  to  contain  skeletons,  but  this 
is  a  minor  affliction  beside  a  husband.  A  skeleton 
doesn't  root  around  in  a  closet  and  turn  it  inside 
out  trying  to  find  its  shoes. 

Closets  have  been  getting  larger  during  the  past 
few  years,  mainly  because  of  the  great  growth  in 
the  size  of  hats.  A  good  many  houses  cannot  be 
rented  any  more  and  are  being  torn  down,  because 
their  closets  will  not  fit  the  modern  hat,  even  if  it 
is  wedged  in  sideways.  As  the  closets  have  grown 
in  size,  the  sleeping  rooms  have,  of  course,  become 
smaller.  A  great  many  sleeping  rooms  are  now 
being  hung  outside  of  the  house  altogether  on  the 
pretense  that  it  is  healthier  to  sleep  outdoors. 
But  the  real  reason  is  because  it  is  so  much  nicer 
to  use  the  sleeping  room  for  a  closet. 


106 


MATCHES 

A  MATCH  is  a  canned  conflagration  which 
is  usually  carried  in  some  one  else's  vest 
pocket.  It  is  practically  the  only  thing 
which  can  be  borrowed  and  never  paid  back  with- 
out injuring  the  borrower's  credit. 

A  match  is  made  by  tipping  a  splinter  of  wood 
with  a  small  sample  of  the  future  residence  of  a 
misspent  life.  It  can  be  ignited  by  drawing  it 
transversely  across  the  rear  outside  of  a  pair 
of  cheap  trousers  from  northeast  to  southwest,  or 
by  scratching  it  on  a  lamp  post,  or  a  white 
enameled  door  frame,  or  a  public  building,  or  a 
red  and  gold  wall  paper  at  $1  a  roll. 

Matches  are  a  modern  marvel.  A  hundred 
years  ago  there  were  no  matches  to  speak  of,  and 
only  a  few  men  had  time  enough  to  acquire  the 
cigar  habit.  Fifty  years  ago  matches  cost  a  quar- 
ter a  box,  and  a  box  was  made  to  last  a  year  in  a 
frugal  family.  Now  matches  cost  a  penny  a  box 
and  are  so  cheap  that  many  a  man  buys  ten  dol- 
lars '  worth  each  year. 

A  match  is  a  little  thing — merely  a  stick  and  a 
sputter — but  it  is  so  important  that  many  a  man 
whose  time  is  worth  $10  a  minute  will  stop  work 
and  hunt  through  eighteen  pockets  for  one ;  and  if 
he  cannot  find  a  match,  he  will  go  to  a  friend,  whose 

107 


MATCHES 

time  is  worth  $5  a  minute  and  stop  his  work  while 
he  borrows  one.  Men  are  divided  into  two  classes 
— those  who  can  get  along  without  matches  and 
those  who  have  never  been  able  to  give  up  the  cigar 
habit.  When  a  man  learns  to  smoke,  he  becomes  a 
slave  to  the  match.  He  can  get  along  without  his 
wife  for  three  months,  while  she  seashores,  but 
without  a  match  he  is  lost  and  useless  and  dis- 
tressed. 

Originally,  matches  were  tipped  with  sulphur 
and  had  to  be  scratched  with  great  energy  and  per- 
sistence, after  which  it  became  necessary  to  go 
away  until  the  head  was  consumed.  But  great  im- 
provements have  been  made  in  matches  in  the  last 
generation.  We  have  now  the  edible  match  which 
can  be  eaten  by  babies  with  marked  benefit;  the 
safety  match  which  cannot  be  lighted  unless  you 
can  find  the  box  it  came  in;  the  windy  weather 
match  which  cannot  be  extinguished  until  it  has 
burned  out  like  Senator  LaFollette ;  and  the  noise- 
less and  smell-less  match  which  is  a  boon  to  the 
burglar  profession  and  to  husbands  who  come  in 
late  at  night. 

Matches  are  a  great  boon  to  mankind  but  should 
not  be  treated  carelessly.  One  of  the  easiest  ways 
to  get  rid  of  a  house,  of  which  you  have  become 
wearied,  is  to  leave  a  box  of  matches  around  where 
a  baby  or  a  mouse  can  get  a  little  innocent  amuse- 
ment out  of  it. 


108 


FIRELESS  COOKERS 

THE  fireless  cooker  is  a  restraining  influ- 
ence on  the  gas  meter  which  is  now  bring- 
ing hope  into  many  a  struggling  family. 

It  is  a  sort  of  a  heat  calaboose  in  which  a  high 
temperature  can  be  imprisoned  over  night.  It  is  a 
chest  filled  with  non-conducting  material,  and 
when  a  pot  of  beans  has  been  brought  to  a  boil  on 
the  fire,  it  can  be  locked  up  in  the  chest  and  kept 
in  a  fervid  and  torrid  condition,  while  the  gas 
stove  cools  off  and  the  meter  folds  its  tired  hands 
and  rests. 

The  fireless  cooker  keeps  the  heat  in  the  beans 
instead  of  allowing  it  to  roam  around  the  kitchen, 
warming  up  the  furniture  and  the  back  porch.  A 
modern  fireless  cooker  will  not  only  cook  beans, 
but  it  will  boil  potatoes,  roast  beefsteak  and  make 
ambrosia  out  of  oatmeal.  More  than  this,  the  fire- 
less  cooker  will  take  an  ancient  hen  with  wire 
wound  legs  and  a  gutta-percha  breast  and  will  re- 
duce her,  in  the  course  of  twelve  hours,  to  a  tender 
and  dainty  morsel  which  can  be  dissected  without 
the  use  of  explosives. 

The  fireless  cooker  is  not  only  taking  a  swat  at 
the  dizzy  price  of  living,  but  it  is  causing  bridge 
whist  to  spread  faster  than  the  measles.  With  the 

109 


TIRELESS  COOKERS 

aid  of  the  fireless  cooker  the  tired  housewife  can 
put  her  dinner  into  solitary  confinement  at  1  p.  M., 
go  off  to  the  whist  club  and  return  at  6  o'clock  to 
find  it  ready  for  the  table.  The  cooker  will  also 
work  Sunday  mornings  and  is  thus  filling  the 
churches  once  more  with  women  who  have  spent 
their  Sunday  mornings  for  years  watching  the 
oven  of  the  kitchen  stove. 

The  fireless  cooker  is  merely  a  reversible  refrig- 
erator. Between  the  two,  heat  and  cold  are  kept 
where  they  belong.  If  a  fireless  cook,  who  will 
also  stay  where  she  belongs,  can  now  be  invented, 
housekeeping  may  yet  become  the  great  American 
pastime. 


110 


AMERICANS  USEFUL— AND  OTHERWISE 


LAWYERS 

THIS  essay  is  going  to  be  a  great  rebuke  to 
the  lawyers,  because  it  is  going  to  tell  all 
about  them  in  400  words ;  whereas,  a  good 
lawyer  cannot  get  through  the  preamble  of  an  in- 
dictment for  chicken  stealing  in  less  than  1,000 
words,  many  of  which  are  as  long  as  a  bull  snake. 

A  lawyer  is  a  passenger  to  prosperity  on  the 
wheels  of  justice  and  he  usually  rides  alone.  He 
is  the  only  man  who  can  examine  a  law  and  tell 
what  it  means  without  making  a  chemical  analysis. 
This  is  because  all  of  our  laws  are  made  by  law- 
yers. A  lawyer  gets  $7,500  a  year  more  or  less, 
and  mileage  for  making  laws,  and  $50,000  a  year 
for  telling  what  he  meant  when  he  wrote  them. 
And  if  he  is  a  particularly  fine  lawyer  he  can  after- 
wards earn  $200,000  a  year  by  demonstrating  to 
the  Supreme  Court  that  they  are  no  good  anyway. 

It  is  a  lawyer's  business  to  protect  mankind 
against  villains,  reformers,  justice,  injustice,  and 
other  lawyers.  For  this  he  receives  a  retaining 
fee  which  is  a  sort  of  financial  tie  rope  to  keep  him 
from  going  over  to  the  other  side.  After  the  case 
is  over  he  receives  another  fee.  This  is  not  fixed 
by  law,  but  is  rarely  more  than  the  client  should 
be  able  to  pay  in  a  lifetime  if  he  practices  economy 
and  does  not  go  to  law  again. 

113 


LAWYEKS 

Lawyers  are  very  wise  and  use  hundreds  of 
heavy  imported  words  which  the  ordinary  man 
could  not  even  lift.  Law  books  are  written  in 
large  percheron  words  which  prevent  common  peo- 
ple from  meddling  with  them  and  reading  what 
doesn't  concern  them.  The  Bible  was  originally 
published  in  this  manner  but  was  translated  later 
and  this  is  what  will  happen  to  the  law  books  some 
day.  When  this  happens  lawyers  will  no  longer 
be  able  to  stun  a  trembling  client  with  a  certiorari, 
mandamus,  res  adjudicata  and  other  jagged  verbal 
junk,  and  the  Supreme  Court  will  have  time  to  go 
fishing  twice  a  week. 

Some  lawyers  are  very  honest  and  will  not  lie 
except  to  a  jury.  Others  are  not  so  particular. 
It  is  easy  to  tell  wiiether  a  lawyer  is  honest  or  not 
by  the  size  of  his  fee.  If  he  leaves  the  client  any- 
thing after  he  has  won  a  judgment  from  him,  he  is 
either  honest  or  so  careless  that  he  is  a  reproach 
to  his  profession. 


114 


MILLIONAIRES 

A  MILLIONAIRE  is  a  man  who  has 
enough  money  to  live  100  years  on  $10,- 
000  a  year. 

Very  few  millionaires  do  this,  however.  Some 
of  them  live  TO  years  on  $100,000  a  year  and  some 
50  years  on  $500  a  year. 

Moreover,  some  millionaires  work  themselves  to 
death  in  three  years  while  trying  to  get  enough 
money  to  live  1000  years  at  $100,000  a  year. 

And  yet  we  put  men  in  insane  asylums  for  such 
trifles  as  trying  to  chase  pink  mice  on  the  ceiling. 

Millionaires  have  no  distinguishing  features  and 
it  is  very  difficult  to  detect  them,  especially  dur- 
ing the  open  season  for  assessments.  Some  mil- 
lionaires are  proud  of  their  money  and  advertise 
it  by  touring  cars,  fancy  wives  and  large,  shapely 
residences  with  " Private.  Keep  out"  on  the 
front  gate.  Others  are  ashamed  of  their  money 
and  keep  it  locked  tightly  in  a  large  steel  safe  so 
that  it  cannot  get  out  and  annoy  the  poor. 

Some  millionaires  can  be  detected  by  the  faces 
they  make  when  they  have  to  smoke  a  cheap  twen- 
ty-five cent  cigar.  On  the  other  hand,  some  mil- 
lionaires can  be  detected  by  the  roar  which  they 
put  up  when  the  newsboy  on  the  corner  tries  to 
hold  out  a  penny  on  them. 

115 


MILLIONAIRES 

Millionaires  make  themselves  principally  in  two 
ways:  by  saving  money  and  by  making  it  impos- 
sible for  any  one  else  to  save  any.  The  latter  is 
by  far  the  more  popular.  By  lunching  on  an 
apple,  wearing  the  same  suit  of  clothes  twenty-five 
years,  and  borrowing  his  neighbor's  lawnmower,  a 
man  may  possibly  become  a  millionaire  in  time  to 
write  a  will  disposing  of  it  to  the  lawyers.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  a  man  invents  a  little  trust  he 
may  become  a  millionaire  over  night  by  putting 
up  the  price  of  ice  owing  to  the  scarcity  of  Christ- 
mas trees. 

New  York  City  has  some  10,000  millionaires  and 
1,000,000  other  fellows  who  are  trying  to  be. 
There  may  be  other  things  the  matter  with  New 
York  but  they  are  trifles  compared  with  this. 

Millionaires,  if  caught  young,  can  be  trained  to 
do  a  great  deal  of  good,  but  the  millionaire  who 
tries  to  eat  and  drink  up  an  income  of  $50,000  a 
year  with  only  occasional  help,  not  only  acquires 
indigestion,  but  a  tearless  tomb. 

We  should  all  strive  to  become  millionaires,  but 
not  as  earnestly  as  we  should  strive  to  keep  our 
taxes  paid  and  our  elbows  out  of  other  people's 
ribs. 


116 


FARMERS 

FELLOW  citizens,  when  we  have  unhooked 
ourselves  from  the  street  car  strap  to- 
night, and  have  seated  ourselves  comfort- 
ably in  the  library  of  our  cozy  flat,  with  one  elbow 
in  the  bathroom  and  a  foot  sticking  out  into  the 
parlor,  let  us  devote  a  few  moments  to  pity  for 
the  poor  farmer  existing  far  from  city  joys. 

The  farmer  tills  the  soil  and  raises  crops  and 
whiskers  and  future  captains  of  industry.  He  is 
a  hard-working  man  and  has  few  joys.  Very 
early  in  the  morning  he  must  get  up  to  see  that 
the  hired  men  do  not  oversleep.  He  cannot  sit 
down  on  a  high  stool  and  order  coffee  and  dough- 
nuts with  a  careless  air.  He  must  wait  until  his 
wife  has  gotten  up,  and  has  lighted  the  gasolene 
stove,  and  has  cooked  bacon  and  ham  and  eggs  and 
corn  bread  and  hash  and  potatoes  and  gravy,  and 
has  warmed  up  some  beans  and  chicken  and  roast 
beef,  and  stewed  corn  and  has  mixed  up  four  gal- 
lons of  cake  batter.  Many  farmers  almost  starve 
to  death  waiting  for  breakfast. 

The  farmer  cannot  sit  down  in  a  comfortable 
chair  after  breakfast,  and  talk  to  a  pretty  stenog- 
rapher all  morning,  either.  He  must  harness  his 
team  and  ride  111  times  around  a  160-acre  field 
on  a  hard  iron  seat.  The  farmer  has  a  whole  barn 

117 


FAEMERS 

full  of  red,  white,  blue  and  green  and  yellow  im- 
plements, all  with  iron  seats,  and  his  is  indeed  a 
hard  life.  Many  a  farmer  has  to  half-sole  his 
overalls  with  leather  three  times  during  the  long 
summer. 

The  farmer  cannot  go  to  a  baseball  game  in  the 
afternoon,  either.  As  soon  as  he  has  finished  di- 
gesting his  dinner  on  the  lounge,  he  must  mend  a 
leak  in  his  acetylene  lighting  plant,  and  put  a  new 
pipe  in  the  pianola  and  repair  a  tire  on  his  touring 
car,  so  that  he  can  drive  into  town  and  get  pota- 
toes and  ice-cream  for  supper.  And  after  supper, 
he  cannot  spend  a  peaceful  evening  on  the  front 
porch  watching  the  cars  go  by.  He  must  drive  his 
family  into  town  to  the  church  social,  and  he  must 
get  a  bushel  of  graphophone  records,  and  must 
hunt  up  the  stock  buyer  and  trade  him  a  fat  pig 
for  a  new  sideboard,  and  a  patent  washing  ma- 
chine. And  likewise  he  will  have  to  get  out  of  his 
automobile  and  go  home  on  the  interurban,  be- 
cause his  daughter 's  best  young  man  is  home  from 
college  and  wants  to  come  out  and  spend  the  eve- 
ning teaching  her  how  to  play  billiards. 

If  it  were  not  for  the  farmer  we  would  all  starve. 
So  let  us  drop  a  tear  for  him  and  pity  him  as  he 
toils  far  out  in  the  country,  where  the  fire  engines 
never  pass  by. 


118 


DOCTORS 

A  DOCTOR  is  a  high  grade  mechanic,  who 
tinkers  with  the  human  mechanism  and 
makes  repairs  and  alterations  at  reason- 
able rates,  depending  on  the  individual. 

Doctors  are  so  wise  that  they  can  tell  what 
makes  a  man's  great  toe  swell  by  looking  at  his 
grocery  bill.  A  good  doctor  can  take  a  drop  of 
blood  from  a  total  stranger,  and  after  looking  at  it 
through  a  microscope,  will  often  be  able  to  shake 
hands  with  at  least  a  dozen  varieties  of  microbes, 
which  are  old  friends  of  his.  Some  doctors  are 
wiser  than  that.  They  are  so  wise  that  they  can 
tell  whether  a  patient  needs  35c  worth  of  medicine 
or  a  $350  operation,  without  looking  at  him  at  all, 
provided  they  can  find  his  rating  in  Bradstreet's. 
These  doctors,  like  some  wizards  of  finance,  are 
considered  too  wise,  however. 

Doctors  are  manufactured  by  medical  colleges 
in  such  quantities  that  a  new  doctor  has  to  wait 
two  years  for  the  sick  list  to  catch  up,  and  give 
him  his  share  of  work.  Medical  students  are  very 
wild,  wearing  beards  on  the  slightest  provocation 
and  going  around  with  their  pockets  full  of  pickled 
ears  from  the  dissecting  room.  But  after  they 
have  settled  down  to  practice,  they  become  grave 
and  dignified.  There  is  nothing  more  dignified 

119 


DOCTORS 

than  a  very  young  doctor  who  is  trying  to  diagnose 
a  case  of  chickenpox,  freehand,  without  looking  at 
the  book,  except  perhaps  an  old  doctor  when  he 
meets  a  young  doctor,  who  has  had  the  audacity  to 
come  into  the  old  doctor's  town,  and  breathe  up 
some  of  his  air.  Doctors  are  very  formal  and  are 
stuffed  full  of  ethics.  Doctors  must  not  advertise 
or  encourage  the  public  in  any  way,  except  by 
wearing  tall  silk  hats  and  joining  fraternal  orders. 
Many  a  man  who  has  acquired  a  rare  and  expensive 
disease  has  died  of  it,  because  the  only  doctor  in 
his  part  who  knows  anything  about  it,  is  sitting  on 
the  information  as  cautiously  as  a  19-year-old  hen 
on  a  bushel  of  china  eggs. 

When  a  doctor  has  established  his  business,  he 
calls  it  his  practice.  This  is  a  poor  name  and 
should  be  abolished  by  law.  It  isn't  comforting 
to  a  man  with  liver  complaint  to  be  asked  who  is 
practicing  on  him. 

Doctors  lead  hard  lives  and  only  sleep  now  and 
then,  owing  to  the  great  amount  of  sickness  at 
night.  They  also  have  to  trust  in  Providence  for 
their  pay.  It  is  much  easier  to  call  a  doctor  thir- 
teen miles  out  into  the  country  to  subdue  a  mess 
of  green  corn  that  has  insurged,  than  it  is  to  drive 
in  and  pay  him  a  year  later.  Doctors  do  more  free 
work  than  any  other  class,  except  amateur  orators, 
and  we  should  not  begrudge  them  a  liberal  fee 
when  they  sink  a  shaft  into  our  interiors  and  re- 
arrange our  works. 


120 


DIRECTORS 

A  DIRECTOR  is  a  man  who  goes  to  a  meet- 
ing to  direct  the  affairs  of  a  stock  com- 
pany during  the  year  which  has  just 
closed.  It  is  easy  to  be  a  director.  All  one  has  to 
do  is  to  own  a  share  of  stock,  accept  a  fee  for  at- 
tending each  meeting  and  keep  out  of  the  way  of 
the  grand  jury. 

Some  directors  are  so  foolish  as  to  insist  on  med- 
dling with  the  affairs  of  the  company.  But  this 
happens  usually  only  in  the  crude  West.  If  a 
director  of  a  great  New  Jersey  corporation  com- 
posed of  water  and  gall  in  equal  parts  were  to  ask 
the  president  what  he  intended  to  do  with  the  com- 
pany he  would  be  fired  for  impertinence. 

Directors  of  this  sort  are  called  dummy  direc- 
tors. They  are  elected  by  double  dummy  stock- 
holders and  their  business  is  to  mind  it. 

Directors  get  from  $10  to  $20  per  meeting,  ac- 
cording to  the  enormity  of  the  corporation.  They 
also  get  a  good  dinner.  After  a  directorate  has 
been  heartened  up  and  made  reckless  by  a  dinner, 
interspersed  with  high-balls,  it  can  approve  in  ten 
minutes  transactions  which  will  later  take  a  gov- 
ernment receiver  ten  years  to  untangle. 

Some  men  belong  to  as  many  as  forty  direc- 
torates. After  a  financier  has  guessed  wrong  on 

121 


DIRECTORS 

the  market  a  few  times  and  has  gone  out  of  busi- 
ness with  nothing  but  an  ornamental  bronze  front 
left,  he  can  pick  up  a  good  little  income,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  gout,  by  serving  on  the  directorate 
of  his  friends*  companies. 

The  beauty  of  the  director  system,  as  used  by 
our  greatest  captains  of  skindustry,  is  that  it  pro- 
vides a  body  of  irresponsible  men  to  assume  the 
responsibility.  After  a  great  financier  has  played 
ping  pong  with  a  fine  railroad  system  for  a  few 
years  and  has  reduced  it  to  a  shattered  or  debili- 
tated wreck,  it  is  a  great  comfort  to  refer  all  in- 
quiries to  a  board  of  directors,  who  don't  know 
anything  about  the  case  and  are  perfectly  ready 
to  say  so. 

Some  of  our  most  eminent  business  men  have 
commented  very  severely  upon  the  United  States 
government,  and  have  declared  that  if  it  were  put 
in  charge  of  a  New  York  corporation  the  country 
could  be  run  for  half  the  present  expense.  It  is 
affecting  to  hear  a  great  man,  who  has  just  run 
through  two  or  three  railroads,  declaring  with 
tears  in  his  eyes  that  the  government  ought  to  quit 
meddling  with  business  and  let  business  run  the 
government.  We  would  be  perfectly  willing  to  see 
the  latter  experiment  tried  if  the  law  would  only 
provide  an  open  season  on  directors. 


122 


FINANCIERS 

A  FINANCIER  is  a  man  who  can  make  two 
dollars  grow  for  himself  where  one  grew 
for  some  one  else  before. 

The  financier  does  not  do  this  by  earning  the 
money.  This  would  be  too  simple.  Any  one  can 
earn  money.  He  does  it  by  ways  which  common 
people  and  governments  are  not  supposed  to  be 
able  to  understand.  If  the  financier  had  a  dollar 
and  needed  two,  he  would  not  hide  one  dollar  under 
a  brick  and  earn  another.  He  would  use  the  dollar 
as  first  payment  on  a  ten  dollar  bill  and  he  would 
then  bond  the  bill  for  a  twenty  dollar  gold  piece 
and  would  charge  five  dollars  for  doing  this.  Then 
he  would  sell  an  option  on  the  twenty-dollar  gold 
piece  at  seventeen  dollars  for  one  dollar  to  forty- 
five  people  and  would  then  dispose  of  a  half  in- 
terest in  the  entire  transaction  for  $150 ;  $2  down 
and  the  rest  payable  in  short  term  notes. 

This  is  the  difference  between  a  financier  and 
the  common  mutt  who  would  buy  the  business. 

It  is  thus  readily  apparent  that  a  financier  is  a 
very  great  man  and  should  be  treated  with  respect. 
Financiers  have  done  this  world  a  great  deal  of 
good  by  coaxing  money  out  of  stockings  and  old 
stoves  and  setting  it  to  work.  So  long  as  the  rest 
of  the  world  keeps  on  getting  up  early  and  labor- 

123 


FINANCIERS 

ing  all  day  to  produce  crops  and  things,  financiers 
are  wonderfully  prosperous  and  play  pool  for  an 
automobile  a  point  after  their  day's  business  is 
over.  But  if  the  rest  of  the  world  ever  stopped 
working  for  a  few  years,  the  financier  would 
starve  to  death  unless  some  one  led  him  out  into  a 
field  and  showed  him  how  to  pull  carrots. 

This,  however,  does  not  prevent  the  financier 
from  being  wonderfully  scornful  of  ordinary  folks. 
Nothing  makes  one  of  these  great  men  so  mad  as 
to  be  hauled  up  before  a  common  old  supreme  court 
and  asked  impertinent  questions  about  his  busi- 
ness. 

When  a  financier  gets  hold  of  a  railroad,  he  does 
wonderful  things  with  it,  buying  other  railroads 
right  and  left  and  increasing  its  capital  stock  and 
bonded  indebtedness  beyond  all  belief.  When  the 
railroad  fails  later  on,  the  financier  lays  it  to  gov- 
ernment interference.  It  is  too  bad  that  the  man 
who  spends  $11,000  a  year  on  a  $5,000  income  and 
goes  broke  can't  lay  it  to  government  interfer- 
ence and  continue  to  be  proud  and  haughty. 


124 


BOOKKEEPERS 

A  BOOKKEEPER  is  a  man  who  lives  on 
figures.  Take  figures  away  from  a  book- 
keeper and  he  will  die  of  starvation  un- 
less he  can  get  a  government  appointment. 

Even  with  the  aid  of  figures  it  is  hard  enough 
for  the  bookkeeper  to  make  ends  meet.  After  the 
pale  and  nervous  bookkeeper  has  finished  erecting 
a  pyramid  of  figures  which  show  that  his  employer 
had  made  $7,000,000  during  the  last  year,  he  goes 
out  on  the  street  and  flips  a  coin  to  decide  whether 
to  ride  home  on  the  street  car  or  to  plunge  wildly 
into  extravagance  and  buy  a  nickel  cigar. 

Bookkeepers  not  only  live  on  figures  but  they 
train  them  to  do  many  wonderful  tricks.  A  skill- 
ful bookkeeper  can  sit  down  in  the  middle  of  a 
wilderness  of  wild  and  unreasonable  figures  and 
in  six  months  he  can  have  them  showing  dividends 
and  surplus  accounts  where  only  ruin  grew  before. 

For  this  he  sometimes  gets  as  much  as  $100  a 
month.  The  cost  of  living  has  gone  up  industri- 
ously but  the  cost  of  bookkeepers  has  remained  re- 
markably steady  for  many  years.  After  the  vet- 
eran bookkeeper  has  spent  all  day  figuring  out 
some  new  way  for  his  employer  to  invest  a  surplus 
so  that  the  public  will  not  notice  it  and  demand  a 
cut  in  the  price  of  gas,  he  has  to  go  home  and  figure 

125 


BOOKKEEPERS 

all  night  in  order  to  make  $20  a  week  buy  as  much 
as  it  did  before  the  butcher  borrowed  a  step  ladder 
and  put  up  the  price  of  meat. 

The  bookkeeper  is  the  compass  of  the  employer. 
The  employer  does  the  business  and  produces  the 
goods,  but  it  takes  the  humble  bookkeeper  to  show 
him  at  the  end  of  the  month  where  he  is  at.  Be- 
fore bookkeepers  were  invented  men  kept  their 
accounts  by  notched  sticks,  and  when  the  son  of  a 
merchant  borrowed  his  books  for  a  fishing  pole, 
business  had  to  suspend. 

Many  men  become  such  skillful  bookkeepers  that 
in  the  course  of  a  few  years  they  have  figured 
themselves  into  the  proprietor's  chair.  But  many 
others  are  strictly  honest  and  die  nobly,  two  dol- 
lars ahead  of  the  constable. 

There  is  a  growing  suspicion  that  Ananias  was 
really  a  bookkeeper  who  had  just  finished  an  an- 
nual report  which  had  turned  $76,000  worth  of 
debts  into  assets  and  had  manufactured  a  cash 
balance  of  $100,000  out  of  a  few  borrowed  bonds 
and  a  couple  of  bad  checks.  However,  this  is  not 
likely  because  of  the  sad  fate  of  Ananias.  If  he 
had  been  that  kind  of  a  bookkeeper  he  would  have 
become  rich  and  respected  and  would  have  won 
great  fame  for  his  firm  stand  against  unnecessary 
agitation  against  business. 


126 


DEMAGOGUES 

FTP"! HE  word  "demagogue"  comes  from  the 
Greek  words  meaning  "to  lead  the  mob." 

M  According  to  Professor  Taft  and  other 
eminent  authorities,  "the  mob"  means  the  ordi- 
nary voter  who  tries  to  butt  in  and  help  govern 
the  country.  Thus  the  word  "demagogue"  is 
more  or  less  of  a  complimentary  term — depending 
entirely  on  the  direction  in  which  the  said  dema- 
gogue is  leading  his  mob. 

In  early  Grecian  history  the  wealthy  and  refined 
families  ran  the  government  and  enjoyed  them- 
selves greatly,  while  the  people  often  had  to  wait 
several  days  between  meals.  This  led  to  discon- 
tent, and  whenever  a  leader  could  not  persuade 
the  best  families  to  elect  him,  he  went  out  and 
harangued  the  rabble,  which  had  a  vote  but  not 
much  of  anything  else.  This  proved  very  profit- 
able to  many  leaders  and  in  time  the  laws  of 
Athens  were  improved  so  much  that  the  common 
citizen  got  a  chance  to  do  some  of  the  grafting 
himself.  Demagogues  have  been  unpopular  in 
certain  quarters  ever  since. 

Nowadays  there  are  two  kinds  of  demagogues 
— the  men  who  harangue  the  ordinary  voter  and 
plead  with  him  to  vote  in  his  own  interests,  and 
the  men  who  try  to  get  him  to  vote  in  the  interest 

127 


DEMAGOGUES 

of  their  party.  The  demagogues  who  have  stirred 
up  the  people  have  produced  a  great  many  reforms 
which  have  been  very  strongly  criticised  by  those 
who  have  been  reformed — while  the  latter  variety 
of  demagogues  have  stirred  up  several  thousand 
fierce  party  quarrels,  which  have  been  pulled  off 
at  great  expense  to  the  nation  and  have  produced 
no  dividends  whatever. 

The  demagogue,  as  we  understand  him  nowa- 
days, is  the  man  who  has  to  prove  that  the  party 
in  power  is  bad,  vicious,  corrupt  and  totally  mis- 
taken in  order  that  his  own  party  may  get  into 
power.  This  compels  him  to  oppose  a  great  many 
good  measures  and  to  defeat  a  great  many  good 
men.  The  demagogue  believes  that  nothing  can 
be  wrong  inside  of  his  own  party  and  that  nothing 
can  be  right  outside  of  it.  Real  demagogues, 
owing  to  the  general  growth  of  intelligence,  are 
getting  to  be  quite  scarce,  but,  unfortunately,  they 
are  harder  to  exterminate  than  the  buffalo  and 
other  specimens  of  early  American  fauna. 

A  demagogue  is  incurable,  but  he  can  generally 
be  quieted  by  giving  him  a  nice  appointive  office. 


128 


EMIGRANTS 

WHEN  the  great  trans-Atlantic  liner 
sails  from  its  European  port  for 
America,  the  Emigrant  is  among 
those  present.  He  does  not  stand,  however,  on  the 
upper  deck  alongside  the  band.  He  crowds  to  the 
rail  down  below  where  the  cattle  would  be  stored 
if  it  was  that  kind  of  a  ship. 

Upstairs  returning  millionaires  sit  on  $1,000  di- 
vans and  gorge  themselves  at  meal  time  with 
dishes  whose  names  alone  are  worth  a  small  for- 
tune. Eight  decks  below,  the  Emigrant  sleeps  in 
a  cubby-hole  ventilated  with  a  hose  and  eats  food 
which  has  been  subjected  to  cruel  and  inhuman 
treatment  by  the  cooks. 

The  Emigrant  leaves  his  own  country  because 
it  has  been  too  hard  on  him,  and  the  Old  World 
gets  one  final  slap  at  him  on  shipboard.  Emi- 
grants are  able-bodied  toilers  and  could  whip  the 
tourists  above  decks  with  one  hand  apiece.  But 
the  tourist  comes  happily  home  while  many  an 
emigrant  goes  over  the  rail  feet  first  after  a  few 
brief  words  read  by  the  first  officer  or  some  bor- 
rowed minister. 

It  does  seem  as  if  the  steamship  companies  could 
trade  a  palm  garden  or  two  for  better  ventilation 
and  food  below  decks.  However,  if  the  Emigrant 

129 


EMIGRANTS 

were  treated  as  a  human  being  he  would  probably 
not  be  so  glad  to  see  America. 

When  the  Emigrant  reaches  New  York  he  bursts 
out  of  his  chrysalis  like  a  butterfly  and  becomes 
an  immigrant.  He  buys  an  American  suit  of 
clothes,  gets  an  American  job,  wipes  his  feet  on 
the  law  in  the  glorious  New  World  way,  and  be- 
gins to  call  the  cashier  of  some  savings  bank  by 
his  first  name.  A  few  years  later  he  goes  back  to 
Europe,  but  he  does  not  go  in  the  steerage.  He 
parades  the  first-class  decks  in  gorgeous  raiment 
and  the  poor  immigrant  looks  up  at  him  from  be- 
low and  says,  "Doubtless  this  is  a  Prince.'* 

America  has  many  faults,  and  the  exquisitely 
polished  European  scion  of  nobility  can  spend 
hours  in  enumerating  them  without  pausing  for 
breath  or  anything  but  absinthe.  But  when  we 
notice  what  Europe  has  done  to  the  Emigrant  in 
the  past  centuries  and  what  America  does  for  him 
in  a  few  brief  years,  we  should  be  reasonably  con- 
tent. 


130 


PROMOTERS 

A  PROMOTER  is  a  man  who  can  mix  up  a 
little  hope,  eloquence,  and  mathematics 
into  a  prospectus,  capitalize  the  same  for 
one  million  dollars,  and  sell  the  stock  for  real 
money  and  40%  commission. 

A  promoter  consists  almost  entirely  of  opti- 
mism. He  can  see  a  fortune  in  a  shoe  buckle,  and 
50%  dividends  in  a  balloon  foundry.  More  than 
this,  his  enthusiasm  is  infectious.  After  he  has 
leaned  against  a  common  citizen  for  a  few  hours, 
talking  preferred  and  common,  net  and  gross 
profits  and  stock  dividends,  the  common  citizen  be- 
comes an  optimist,  too,  and  gets  to  seeing  automo- 
biles and  trips  to  Europe  in  place  of  his  $1,000 
bank  balance.  This  is  one  reason  why  times  are 
always  so  hard  with  men  of  much  faith. 

A  good  promoter  is  a  genius  with  figures.  Fig- 
ures can't  lie,  but  they  don't  have  to  when  they 
are  working  with  a  promoter.  He  can  take  a  car- 
pet tack  factory  30  feet  square  and  capable  of  mak- 
ing $50  a  month,  and  if  he  can  borrow  scratch- 
paper  enough,  he  can  figure  with  that  factory  un- 
til he  has  stretched  it  into  a  40-acre  plant,  which 
uses  a  tank  car  of  ink  a  week  to  keep  its  books. 
When  he  has  finished  his  figures,  he  capitalizes 

131 


PROMOTERS 

them  at  $1,000,000  preferred  and  $17,000,000  com- 
mon stock,  and  goes  away  a  thousand  miles,  where 
he  sells  the  stock  at  par.  It  is  necessary  to  go 
some  distance  away,  because  the  refraction  of  the 
air  makes  a  concern  of  this  kind  look  bigger  when 
it  is  about  five  states  away. 

A  promoter  must  be  able  to  see  far  into  the  fu- 
ture and  to  estimate  the  possibilities  of  this  glori- 
ous country,  which  may  be  demanding  billions  of 
flexible  rubber  toothpicks  in  the  next  few  years. 
He  must  have  unlimited  faith  in  commercial  prog- 
ress, and  the  ability  to  write  about  patent  washing 
machines  and  new  monorail  systems  so  eloquently 
that  the  man  who  reads  will  be  convinced  that  he 
is  depriving  his  children  of  carloads  of  kopecks 
by  not  selling  his  home  and  investing.  Only  the 
medium  grade  of  writers  become  authors,  and 
only  the  second  rate  conversationalists  become  pol- 
iticians. The  greatest  of  these  species  become 
promoters. 

Some  promoters  get  so  convincing  with  their 
plans  that  they  convince  themselves.  This  is  a 
very  bad  thing  for  them,  but  it  has  been  a  fine 
thing  for  the  country.  Most  of  our  railroads  have 
been  built  by  promoters,  who  oiled  and  scraped 
and  fought  and  built  on  faith  and  hope;  after 
which  the  quiet  capitalist  skipped  in  at  the  sher- 
iff's sale  and  got  the  results.  This  country  has 
been  made  by  faith  and  promoters.  But  the  men 
who  had  the  faith  seldom  got  the  dividends. 

132 


COMMITTEES 

A  COMMITTEE  is  a  cold  storage  ware- 
house for  business. 
There  are  over  ninety  million  commit- 
tees in  this  country  of  one  kind  or  another.    They 
hold  several  meetings  each  per  year.    At  these 
meetings  enough  talking  is  done  to  sweep  the  en- 
tire state  of  Texas  with  a  devastating  cyclone  of 
carbon  dioxide.    Sometimes  a  committee  will  also 
do  some  work,  but  only  when  there  is  nothing  more 
to  talk  about. 

Committees  are  a  great  convenience.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  end  any  business  meeting  without 
appointing  a  committee  for  in  this  case  the  meet- 
ing would  have  to  do  the  business  itself.  After  a 
man  has  managed  a  few  hundred  public  meetings, 
he  can't  get  his  furnace  banked  at  night  in  his 
home  without  appointing  himself  a  committee  to 
attend  to  the  matter  and  report  at  some  future 
meeting. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  committees,  including 
executive  committees,  committees  of  the  whole, 
committees  of  one,  finance  committees  and  stand- 
ing committees.  There  are  also  legislative  and 
congressional  committees.  The  business  of  these 
last  two  committees  is  to  sit  on  new  legislation 

133 


COMMITTEES 

with  all  the  fervor  and  patience  of  a  hen  trying  to 
hatch  a  granite  doorknob.  After  a  man  has 
served  on  legislative  committees  for  a  few  years 
he  can't  attend  to  his  furnace  at  home  at  all.  He 
refers  it  to  a  committee,  kills  the  bill  and  his  wife 
has  to  do  it. 

Committees  are  composed  of  two  parts — the 
chairman,  who  does  the  work,  and  the  members, 
who  get  their  names  in  the  newspapers.  The  com- 
mittee habit  has  the  nation  firmly  in  its  grip,  and 
the  only  way  to  avoid  being  appointed  on  a  dozen 
a  year  is  to  attend  all  possible  meetings  and  refuse 
in  a  loud,  impressive  tone  of  voice,  on  the  plea  of 
important  business  affairs. 


134 


IN  SOCIETY 


DIAMONDS 

A  DIAMOND  is  a  chunk  of  highly  com- 
pressed prosperity,  and  is  used  princi- 
pally to  announce  the  same. 

Diamonds  are  composed  of  pure  carbon. 
Next  to  being  honest,  a  diamond  is  the  hardest 
thing  in  the  world.  When  it  is  found,  it  is  rough 
and  unattractive,  and  it  takes  months  to  grind  it 
down  into  a  graceful  shape.  When  a  diamond  is 
cut  and  mounted,  it  sparkles  like  best  seller  con- 
versation. A  large  diamond,  worn  in  the  shirt 
front,  is  a  beautiful  ornament,  and  usually  detracts 
a  great  deal  of  attention  from  the  plain  face 
above  it. 

Diamonds  are  found  in  South  Africa  and  South 
America.  The  soil  of  the  United  States  is  not  im- 
pregnated with  them,  but  if  Broadway  were  to  be 
swept  with  a  drag  net  at  night,  and  the  results 
boiled  down,  it  would  yield  upwards  of  a  carload 
of  fine  stones. 

The  diamond  is  used  by  young  ladies  as  an  ad- 
vertisement of  their  engagement,  and  nothing  so 
solidifies  the  love  of  a  girl  for  her  hero  as  a  nice 
carat  stone  in  a  ring.  In  some  cases  the  more 
heroes  she  can  have  the  better,  and  when  she  is 
finally  married,  she  has  a  barrel  of  souvenir  rings. 

137 


DIAMONDS 

Diamonds  are  often  indulged  to  excess  by  the 
very  rich.  A  few  diamonds  attached  to  a  perfect 
lady  are  all  right,  but  when  she  has  to  wear  them 
in  her  teeth  and  on  her  ankles  in  order  to  make 
room,  she  is  no  better  than  a  pawnbroker's  show 
window. 

Diamonds  are  often  used  by  men  as  an  invest- 
ment. The  price  of  diamonds  is  always  going  up, 
and  the  man  who  pays  $350  for  a  diamond  as  big  as 
a  steamboat  headlight,  can  often  sell  it  for  $450 
in  a  few  years,  which  is  almost  as  good  as  putting 
the  money  out  at  interest.  However,  diamonds 
are  more  restless  than  18-year-old  daughters,  and 
after  a  man  has  protected  a  diamond  ring  and  stud 
from  holdup  men,  burglars  and  hard  times  for  a 
few  years,  he  has  to  give  up  his  business  and  take 
a  long  rest. 

Diamonds  are  also  used  to  cut  glass,  as  well  as 
wide  swaths. 


138 


HATS 

A  HAT   is    a    roof   for    a    man.    Nature 
thatched  him  when  she  made  him  but 
didn't  give  him  any  eaves.    The  hat  pro- 
vides the  proper  eaves  and  drainage  and  keeps  the 
rain  from  soaking  down  into  the  upper  story  and 
warping  the  mental  furniture. 

Hats  have  existed  for  thousands  of  years,  but 
more  severely  at  some  times  than  at  others.  There 
are  now  about  500  kinds  of  hats  in  the  world.  The 
Mexican  wears  a  volcano-shaped  hat  about  three 
feet  high  with  a  brim  as  big  as  a  washbowl.  When 
he  takes  it  off  at  night  he  sleeps  under  it.  The 
college  freshman  wears  a  green  cap  which  merely 
covers  his  bump  of  audacity  and  can  be  worn  in  the 
vest  pocket  when  not  in  use.  In  England  society 
among  men  is  divided  into  two  grades.  One  grade 
wears  the  tall  silk  hat  and  the  other  the  green  golf 
cap. 

The  derby  hat  is  worn  by  many  modest  men.  It 
is  a  black  felt  hat  modeled  after  an  ostrich  egg  and 
must  be  protected  like  an  infant.  Thousands  of 
derby  hats  are  sat  upon  each  year  with  the  most 
discouraging  results.  The  straw  hat  is  light,  cool 
and  also  handsome  for  the  first  fifteen  minutes 
after  it  is  bought.  After  that  it  is  rained  on  and 

139 


HATS 

looks  like  a  work-basket  in  its  dotage.  The  Pan- 
ama hat  is  composed  of  one-third  straw  and  two- 
thirds  bunk.  It  is  woven  under  water  in  the  thick 
of  the  moon  and  costs  as  much  as  the  seller  thinks 
the  buyer  can  be  worked  for.  When  a  man  is  seen 
wearing  a  vast  Panama  hat  with  its  brim  lan- 
guidly flapping  in  the  breeze  like  the  edge  of  a  cir- 
cus tent,  it  is  a  sign  that  he  can  also  be  sold  auto- 
mobiles, perfumery  and  hand  made  shoes. 

The  world  has  various  paroxysms  over  hats. 
A  few  years  ago  millions  of  pussy  cat  hats  were 
sold  and  men  who  were  getting  bald  themselves 
without  concern  watched  these  hats  moult  with 
rage  and  woe.  Some  other  year  no  man  is  a 
true  sport  unless  he  wears  a  green  felt  hat  with 
the  brim  hanging  down  like  a  cigarette  from  the 
lip  of  an  unspanked  son. 

Most  men  are  slaves  to  hats  and  do  not  know 
how  to  go  out  of  doors  without  them.  Men  have 
burned  to  death  while  frantically  hunting  for 
their  hats.  Hats  are  prominent  both  in  religion 
and  politics.  Quakers  wear  their  hats  into 
church  and  court,  while  the  Missouri  and  Texas 
statesman  may  have  the  eloquence  of  Demos- 
thenes, but  unless  he  wears  a  broad-brimmed  black 
felt  hat,  he  might  as  well  quit  running  in  advance. 


140 


CANES 

THE  cane  is  a  necessity  of  old  age  and  a  lux- 
ury of  youth.    Old  men  and  a  great  many 
young  men  find  it  impossible  to  walk  with- 
out a  cane.    But  not  for  the  same  reason. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  cane  to  support  an  old  man. 
But  it  is  the  duty  of  a  stylish  young  man  to  sup- 
port a  cane. 

If  a  feeble  old  man  were  to  go  forth  without  a 
cane,  he  would  fall  down  and  injure  himself 
grievously.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  proper  young 
man  were  to  leave  his  home  and  abandon  his  cane, 
he  would  feel  as  guilty  as  if  he  had  left  a  helpless 
child  to  its  fate. 

Old  men  grasp  the  cane  firmly  by  the  handle  and 
rest  the  other  end  upon  the  walk.  But  if  a  young 
man  were  to  do  this  he  would  make  himself  the 
subject  of  a  great  deal  of  comment.  Except  when 
propping  himself  up  while  standing  in  conversa- 
tion, the  young  man  does  not  abuse  his  cane  by 
jamming  it  into  the  hard,  concrete  walk.  He 
handles  it  tenderly  and  guards  the  ferrule  from 
injury.  Mud  on  the  end  of  a  young  man's  cane  is 
as  disgraceful  as  mud  on  his  collar. 

141 


CANES 

The  green  and  awkward  young  man  is  greatly 
afflicted  by  his  cane.  He  sticks  it  into  cracks  in 
the  walk,  forgets  it  in  public  places  and  has  to  hold 
it  between  his  legs  when  he  puts  on  his  gloves.  It 
takes  several  years  to  learn  to  wear  a  youth's  size 
cane  correctly.  And  the  worst  of  it  is  the  fact 
that  when  a  man  really  needs  a  cane  he  has  to  un- 
learn all  that  he  has  learned  about  it  in  his  gay  and 
carefree  youth. 

The  cane  is  very  useful  to  the  old  man.  But  it 
also  serves  a  purpose  for  the  young  man.  While  a 
young  man  is  managing  a  cane,  he  has  no  chance 
to  carry  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  If  the  cane  could 
only  be  improved  so  that  it  would  keep  its  wearer's 
hands  out  of  other  pockets,  too,  it  would  be  made 
a  compulsory  decoration  by  a  grateful  nation. 


142 


COLLARS 

MUCH  has  been  said  on  the  subject  of  col- 
lars but  not  all  of  it  can  be  repeated  here 
with  propriety. 

Collars  were  invented  in  the  sixteenth  century 
along  with  thumb-screws  and  other  deadly  imple- 
ments. At  that  time  the  collar  consisted  of  a  wide 
starched  ruff,  and  after  a  man  had  worn  these  ruffs 
for  a  few  years,  he  gladly  committed  treason  and 
submitted  to  the  ax  with  pleasure  and  relief. 

Decapitation  was,  in  fact,  a  favorite  method  of 
removing  the  early  Elizabethan  collar,  but  how  it 
was  put  on  still  remains  a  mystery.  Scientists  are 
inclined  to  believe,  however,  that  the  collar  was 
slipped  over  the  victim's  head  in  infancy  and  that 
he  was  compelled  to  grow  up  inside  of  it. 

Later  on  the  collar  was  modified  in  severity  un- 
til now  it  is  only  a  minor  affliction  like  the  tooth- 
ache. The  modern  collar  is  made  of  four-ply  linen, 
reenforced  with  starch.  This  gives  it  stiffness 
enough  to  saw  the  epiglottis  in  two  under  favor- 
able conditions,  but  at  the  same  time  does  not  pre- 
vent it  from  being  mangled  rapidly  and  success- 
fully in  a  laundry.  Thanks  to  the  laundry  the 
collar  is  short  lived.  This  is  its  only  virtue.  Be- 
fore the  wearer  can  learn  to  hate  any  one  collar 
intensely,  it  has  gone  to  the  rag-bag. 

143 


COLLARS 

The  collar  comes  in  various  shapes,  including 
the  white  wings,  the  chin  scratcher  and  the  modi- 
fied cuff ,  and  is  attached  to  the  muzzle  of  the  shirt 
by  two  collar  buttons.  To  install  the  collar,  the 
patient  inserts  the  buttons  in  the  neck-band  of  the 
shirt  with  thumbs  and  forefingers.  He  then  slips 
around  behind  himself  and  attaches  the  middle  of 
the  collar  to  the  aft  collar  button  with  the  aid  of 
a  jimmy  and  a  button-hook.  Then  seizing  one  end 
of  the  collar  he  hauls  it  around  to  the  forward  col- 
lar button  which  he  holds  in  place  with  his  knees 
and  buttons  the  end  with  both  hands  and  a  couple 
of  finger  nails.  He  then  grasps  the  remaining  end 
of  the  collar  and  stretches  it  until  it  reaches  around 
to  the  forward  button.  Bracing  the  button 
against  his  Adam's  apple,  he  rims  out  the  button 
hole  with  his  thumb-nail,  presses  it  against  the 
collar  button  with  one  foot  and  gradually  works 
it  home  with  both  hands  and  his  teeth.  Much  of 
the  English  language  was  invented  during  the 
stress  of  putting  a  fifteen  collar  on  a  fifteen  and 
one-half  neck-band. 

Collars  are  white  and  beautiful  like  sepulchers. 
They  are  useful  because  of  the  vast  stretches  of 
scrawny,  angular,  red  and  flabby  necks  which  they 
hide  from  the  public.  If  nature,  however,  had 
grown  collars  from  the  shoulder-blades  as  she  has 
grown  nails  on  fingers  and  toes,  she  would  have 
made  the  civilized  life  much  more  worth  living  for 
men. 


144 


NECKTIES 

A  NECKTIE  is  man's  substitute  for  rib- 
bons, lace,  frills,  flounces,  feathers,  re- 
veres, berthas,  jabots,  dog  collars  and 
other  ornaments,  too  numerous  to  mention. 

Very  few  men  attempt  to  beautify  themselves  by 
hanging  on  decorations.  Most  men  regard  this 
task  as  hopeless  and  are  content  to  let  their  tail- 
ors sculpture  them  into  attractive  shapes  and  de- 
signs. It  is  only  in  his  necktie,  as  a  rule,  that 
man  attempts  to  dazzle  the  world  with  color  and 
design. 

Man's  devotion  to  dress  can  usually  be  meas- 
ured by  his  neckties.  If  he  buys  $15  worth  of  suit 
and  wears  it  until  the  health  department  objects, 
he  usually  has  the  clothier  throw  in  a  necktie  which 
he  wears  until  it  comes  apart.  Many  a  man  has 
come  back  home  to  Boggs'  Corners  or  Crowfoot  so 
changed  in  features  that  his  old  friends  would  not 
have  recognized  him  except  for  his  necktie. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  a  man  has  a  suit  for  every 
day  in  the  week  and  a  dozen  pairs  of  beautiful 
cream  colored  pants  for  summer  wear,  he  usually 
picks  out  neckties  as  lovingly  as  a  connoisseur 
picking  out  art,  and  many  a  man  who  picks  out 
twenty  candidates  for  office  from  among  two  hun- 
dred in  ten  seconds  will  spend  an  hour  trying  to 

145 


NECKTIES 

decide  whether  or  not  a  lemon  colored  tie  with 
gold  and  sapphire  arabesques  will  bring  out  his 
ginger  colored  hair  too  prominently. 

A  few  men  prefer  landscape  art  to  neckties  and 
wear  beards  instead  with  great  economy  and  suc- 
cess. And  a  few  old  fashioned  men  use  a  $100 
diamond  collar  button  as  a  substitute,  saving 
much  money  in  the  long  run,  because  a  diamond 
never  fades  or  parts  in  the  back  under  a  heavy 
strain.  But  the  remainder  of  mankind  spend  a 
few  minutes  each  morning  running  a  necktie 
through  a  collar  and  hauling  on  the  slack  end  of 
the  knot  like  a  sailor  tugging  at  the  mainsheet. 
There  are  few  sadder  features  of  modern  slavery 
than  the  sight  of  a  brave  patriot  trying  to  choke 
himself  and  to  swear  at  the  same  time  while  con- 
forming to  fashion's  stern  decree. 

To  the  student  of  character,  the  black  string 
necktie  denotes  either  piety  or  politics;  the  trig 
little  bow,  neatness  and  efficiency;  the  chromatic 
four-in-hand  with  calliope  toots,  recklessness  at 
cards ;  the  two  acre  folding  affair  which  hides  the 
shirt,  an  economical  disposition ;  the  flowing  cata- 
ract of  crepe  de  Chine,  an  artistic  disposition  far 
above  the  thought  of  work ;  and  the  greasy  tie  with 
the  front  worn  off  back  to  the  lining — an  aversion 
to  bathtubs  and  other  fussy  ideas. 


146 


THE  DOLLAR 

IT  is  impossible  to  speak  of  the  kindly,  hard- 
working dollar  in  anything  but  terms  of  affec- 
tion. Whatever  may  be  our  contempt  for 
twenty-dollar  bills  and  $1,000  bills  we  can  only  ad- 
mit that  the  plain  and  capable  dollar  is  a  friend 
of  humanity  and  is  full  of  good  works. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  dollars,  hard  and  soft. 
The  East  prefers  the  soft  dollar  which  can  be 
folded  up  and  placed  in  a  pocket  book  in  the  hip 
pocket,  from  which  it  can  easily  be  extracted  by 
removing  the  glove  and  the  overcoat  and  turning 
the  contents  of  the  pocketbook  upside  down  into  a 
hat.  The  hurried  West  prefers  the  hard  dollar 
which  is  durable,  convenient  and  cannot  be  mis- 
taken in  the  dark  for  a  laundry  bill  and  cast 
haughtily  into  the  fire. 

However,  hard  and  soft  dollars  are  equally  tal- 
ented in  producing  pleasant  effects.  The  amount 
of -sunshine  and  joy  and  internal  comfort  which  a 
dollar,  even  an  old  and  dog-eared  one  can  produce, 
is  little  short  of  marvelous.  A  dollar  will  set  'em 
up  from  ten  to  forty  times  to  cigars.  It  will  carry 
us  fifty  miles  by  railroad  and  will  support  a  man 
for  several  days.  A  dollar  will  buy  enough 
printed  wisdom  to  last  some  men  forty  years  or  it 
will  purchase  three  hundred  laughs  in  the  balcony 

147 


THE  DOLLAB 

of  any  theater.  A  dollar  will  commit  twenty  acts 
of  charity.  With  the  200th  part  of  a  dollar,  a  poor 
woman  purchased  a  reputation  for  charity  almost 
2000  years  ago  which  even  now  makes  a  Rockefeller 
look  like  a  tight  wad.  With  a  dollar  a  man  can 
buy  a  year's  good  government  and  with  a  dollar 
he  can  buy  much  trouble  that  he  will  still  be  dodg- 
ing ten  years  hence. 

Every  one  loves  the  dollar  and  is  hospitable  to 
it.  We  may  be  charming  and  lovable,  ingenious 
and  aesthetic,  but  unless  we  can  induce  a  certain 
number  of  dollars  per  week  to  gather  beneath  our 
humble  roof,  we  are  going  to  make  a  failure  out  of 
life.  No  other  visitor  is  as  welcome  as  the  dol- 
lar. The  man  who  will  grumble  if  he  has  to  get 
out  of  his  chair  at  7  p.  M.  and  welcome  his  mother- 
in-law,  will  slide  down  the  banisters  at  2  A.M.  with 
a  glad  shriek  and  welcome  a  dollar  with  both 
hands. 

Some  men,  however,  do  not  seem  able  to  enter- 
tain the  dollar  when  they  have  him.  They  will 
start  the  week  with  fifty  of  them,  and  those  dollars 
will  make  the  most  ridiculous  excuses  to  leave  him 
and  stay  gone.  Other  men  who  have  never  enter- 
tained a  human  being  in  their  lives  are  so  fascinat- 
ing to  dollars  that  the  little  creatures  will  not  only 
make  their  permanent  homes  with  them,  but  will 
go  out  and  grab  other  dollars  by  the  neck  and 
haul  them  in  for  company. 


148 


MENUS 

A  MENU  is  French  for  a  pricelist  of  gas- 
tronomical  adventures. 
All  hotels  and  many  banquets  have 
menus.    In  the  latter  case  they  are  of  no  interest 
to  the  diner,  because  he  has  to  eat  everything  any- 
way, but  the  hotel  menu  is  one  of  the  most  valuable 
text-books  of  modern  life. 

Making  menus  has  made  many  a  hotel  keeper 
rich,  and  failing  to  understand  them  has  kept  many 
a  diner  touching  the  cashier  for  an  advance  on 
next  week's  salary. 

The  hotel  man  who  understands  menu-making 
can  concoct  a  wonderful  dish,  label  it  "Petite  pois 
dans  1'eau  chaud  au  le  matre  d 'hotel"  and  sell  it 
for  75  cents  a  knifeful  to  the  diner  who  can't  read 
French.  But  the  man  who  has  made  a  study  of 
the  menu  with  its  mysterious  and  devious  ways 
merely  smiles  at  this  wonderful  bargain  and  goes 
down  the  street  to  the  lightning  lunch,  where  a 
waiter  yells  "side  o'  peas"  and  brings  him  five 
cents '  worth  from  the  same  cannery. 

Almost  all  menus  are  printed  in  French,  but  this 
is  not  affectation  on  part  of  the  hotel  proprietor. 
He  doesn't  care  whether  the  world  believes  he  un- 
derstands French  or  not.  He  merely  hasn't  the 

149 


MENUS 

nerve  to  put  the  necessary  prices  after  the  dishes 
in  English.  The  French  acts  as  a  sort  of  anaes- 
thetic on  the  diner  and  deadens  the  pain  of  paying 
55  cents  a  reel  for  string  beans,  45  cents  for  a  small 
hod  full  of  mashed  potatoes  and  $1.25  for  a  slice 
of  roast  beef  medium. 

French  is  also  very  useful  in  menus  because  it 
enables  the  cook  to  tell  the  absolute  truth  while 
working  off  the  leavings.  If  he  has  bought  a  very 
old  hen  which  can  only  be  dissected  with  a  cold 
chisel  he  has  merely  to  label  it  "Poulet  de  temps 
Napoleon"  and  sell  it  for  double  price  to  those 
who  judge  their  food  by  the  length  of  the  label. 
When  the  country  hotel  keeper  is  stung  with  a 
crate  of  ancient  eggs  he  has  to  take  the  loss,  but 
the  French  chef  can  slap  them  on  the  menu  as 
"Oefs  de  1'annee  passe"  and  get  75  cents  a  pair 
for  last  year's  eggs. 

These  things  teach  us,  beloved  reader,  that 
knowledge  is  a  grand  thing  and  can  be  made  to 
pay  big  dividends.  Or  else  it  can  be  used  to  pre- 
vent the  other  man  from  taking  big  dividends 
from  you,  which  is  just  as  important. 


150 


SOCIETY 

SOCIETY  is  a  mysterious  and  delightful 
pastime,  in  which  every  one  is  interested 
and  of  which  very  few  approve.  It  con- 
sists of  clothes,  manners  and  press  notices  in  equal 
proportions.  The  mixing  of  these  three  with  an 
unlimited  amount  of  money,  is  supposed  to  pro- 
duce happiness  in  unalloyed  chunks. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  does  not  often  do  this. 
But  it  produces  envy  in  the  onlookers,  which,  as 
every  one  knows,  is  just  as  good  as  happiness. 

Society  is  a  continual  battle  between  those  who 
are  out  and  are  trying  to  get  in  and  those  who  are 
in  and  are  trying  to  keep  the  rest  of  the  world  out. 
More  money  is  spent  in  social  battles  than  is  spent 
in  real  war,  and  the  effect  on  the  men  in  both  cases 
is  equally  distressing. 

Getting  into  society  is  a  difficult  and  dangerous 
performance.  Some  people  get  in  up  to  their 
necks  and  some  entirely  over  their  heads.  Learn- 
ing to  float  on  the  social  wave  is  one  of  the  most 
difficult  arts.  The  floater  nearly  always  has  to 
throw  away  his  or  her  heart  to  lighten  the  cargo, 
and  sometimes  the  stomach  and  brain  go  over- 
board, too. 

The  object  of  society  is  to  be  merry  and  gay  in 
151 


SOCIETY 

the  society  columns  of  the  newspapers.  Society 
is  a  cooperative  affair  in  which  every  member  is 
supposed  to  contribute  to  the  amusement  of  the 
rest.  Some  contribute  money  and  food,  while  oth- 
ers contribute  good  looks,  and  still  others  con- 
tribute ancestors.  Fine  new  gowns  and  rare  old 
ancestors  are  always  at  war  in  society,  and  at  pres- 
ent the  gowns  seem  to  have  the  ancestors  on  the 
run,  owing  to  the  growing  scarcity  of  the  latter. 

Contrary  to  the  general  impression,  brains  can 
also  be  contributed  to  society  with  good  results. 
Some  people  are  so  interesting  that  they  can  get 
into  society  without  money  or  ancestors.  But 
they  usually  prefer  to  go  to  Congress  or  build  rail- 
roads. 

In  England,  social  stations  are  fixed  by  law,  but 
this  is  a  free  country  and  any  one  can  get  into  soci- 
ety by  paying  the  initiation  fee  and  the  hourly 
dues.  One  of  the  easiest  ways  to  get  into  Amer- 
ican society  is  to  arrive  from  the  other  side  and 
make  a  noise  like  a  duke. 

Some  people  profess  great  scorn  and  indigna- 
tion at  society,  while  others  pay  no  attention  to 
it,  but  go  right  on  raising  children  in  the  most 
shameless  manner.  This  makes  it  easy  for  us  to 
tell  who  want  to  get  into  society  and  who  do  not. 


152 


SAFETY  VALVES 


FRESH  AIR 

FRESH  air  is  air  which  is  not  contaminated 
with  carbon  dioxide,  sewer  gas,  cuss 
words,  gossip  or  tobacco  smoke.  It  con- 
sists of  the  highest  quality  of  oxygen  and  nitrogen 
with  a  little  ozone  thrown  in  to  give  it  tone  and  is 
the  very  finest  article  used  for  breathing  purposes. 
Out  in  the  mountains,  far  from  the  haunts  of 
man,  the  air  is  fresher  than  country  butter. 
After  a  man  has  breathed  in  a  few  million  cubic 
feet  of  it  he  can  eat  an  ox,  hoofs  and  all,  and  thinks 
nothing  of  taking  a  small  sized  bear  across  his 
knees  and  spanking  him  severely.  But  the  air  in 
a  large  city  is  of  a  much  inferior  quality.  It  has 
been  used  so  much  and  has  been  mixed  with  so 
many  kinds  of  odors  and  gases  and  has  had  to  min- 
gle with  so  many  sex  plays  in  the  theaters  and  so 
much  politics  outside,  that  it  is  no  better  for 
breathing  purposes  than  so  much  tar.  After  a 
baby  has  spent  a  few  months  in  a  one-room  tene- 
ment breathing  the  air  after  six  or  eight  older  peo- 
ple have  been  using  it  and  the  sun  has  been  frying 
it  until  it  has  addled  like  an  egg,  the  said  baby 
usually  gives  up  in  disgust  and  goes  to  a  country 
where  harp  music  is  used  in  place  of  oxygen  to 
sustain  life. 

155 


FRESH  AIR 

By  long  practice  some  people  can  inure  them- 
selves to  air  which  has  not  been  changed  (for 
weeks.  However,  the  same  people  can  usually 
find  comfort  in  a  shirt  which  hasn't  been  changed 
for  a  year.  Both  practices  are  uncleanly. 

Americans  are  very  fond  of  fresh  air  and  con- 
sume enormous  quantities  of  it,  not  only  at  base- 
ball games  and  at  the  seashore,  but  on  golf  courses 
and  sleeping  porches.  A  sleeping  porch  is  now 
used  as  a  specific  for  a  large  number  of  diseases 
and  if  its  popularity  grows,  the  carpenters  will 
soon  be  riding  in  automobiles  and  the  doctors  will 
be  working  for  fifty  cents  an  hour. 

Fresh  air  strengthens  the  lungs,  purifies  the 
blood,  steadies  the  temper,  untangles  the  nerves, 
and  braces  up  the  morals.  The  air  in  the  home 
should  be  changed  at  least  once  an  hour  and  the 
air  in  the  theater  should  be  changed  immediately 
after  each  doubtful  joke  and  suggestive  song.  If 
the  audience  could  be  changed,  too,  it  would  have 
a  great  influence  in  uplifting  the  stage. 


156 


GOLF  BALLS 

A  GOLF  ball  is  a  piece  of  currency  which 
varies  in  value  from  50  cents  to  75  cents. 
It  is  legal  tender  on  all  golf  courses. 

Golf  balls  are  made  of  fine  rubber  by  an  exten- 
sive and  complicated  process,  which  causes  them 
to  cost  more  than  watermelons  or  nail  kegs.  A 
golf  ball  is  about  iy2  inches  in  diameter  when  it 
is  bought,  but  after  it  has  been  driven  into  the  long 
grass  it  shrinks  to  the  size  of  a  nickel's  worth  of 
radium  and  is  extremely  difficult  to  find. 

Golf  balls  are  very  elastic  and  when  hit  brutally 
with  a  long,  large-headed  club  they  sometimes  fly 
almost  1,000  feet.  In  these  days  of  persistent  and 
almost  paralytic  peace,  about  the  only  danger  the 
average  business  man  faces  is  that  of  being  shot 
with  a  golf  ball.  When  such  a  ball  is  traveling  at 
its  best  speed  it  is  almost  as  dangerous  as  a  charge 
from  an  old-fashioned  blunderbuss. 

Millions  of  golf  balls  are  made  each  year  in  this 
country,  but  the  visible  supply  does  not  increase. 
In  fact,  there  is  no  visible  supply  of  golf  balls. 
After  a  ball  has  gone  into  use  it  is  invisible  most 
of  the  time.  In  the  art  of  crawling  under  a  leaf 
or  down  a  worm  hole,  no  insect,  however  well 

157 


GOLF  BALLS 

equipped  with  legs,  can  excel  a  golf  ball.  Each 
year  carloads  of  bright,  new  white  balls  are  manu- 
factured, and  by  winter  each  one  of  these  balls 
has  retired  to  some  quiet  spot  on  a  golf  course, 
where  it  will  not  be  interfered  with  by  man.  Some 
day,  thousands  of  years  hence,  archaeologists,  dig- 
ging around  the  United  States,  will  find  vast  de- 
posits of  golf  balls  in  various  spots.  These  spots 
will  represent  the  golf  courses  of  to-day. 

The  golf  ball  is  an  education  in  extravagance 
and  also  in  the  art  of  holding  one's  temper.  If  a 
man  can  drive  two  or  three  nice  new  golf  balls  into 
the  mysterious  unknown  without  getting  mad  and 
biting  his  club  in  two  he  is  scandalously  extrava- 
gant. And  if  he  isn't  extravagant  he  mislays  his 
temper  even  more  thoroughly  than  he  has  mislaid 
the  balls. 


158 


CIGARETTES 

ACIGAKETTE  is  a  small  paper  cylinder 
which  is  used  by  some  people  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  tobacco  and  by  others  as  a 
substitute  for  brains. 

The  cigarette  is  poisonous  in  the  extreme  and 
a  million  of  them  will  kill  a  strong  man  if  he  lives 
long  enough  to  smoke  them.  It  has  as  few  friends 
in  this  country  as  the  rattlesnake  and  is  much  more 
violently  denounced.  Very  few  boys  have  been 
bitten  by  rattlesnakes,  but  millions  of  boys  have 
smoked  cigarettes  behind  the  barn  just  once  and 
have  been  unable  to  walk  with  comfort  for  a  week 
afterward. 

Cigarettes  are  very  cheap  and  if  a  man  will  roll 
them  himself  he  can  smoke  100  at  a  cost  of  5  cents 
for  material  and  $20.00  in  time.  Spain  has  stood 
still  for  hundreds  of  years  because  its  people  have 
not  learned  how  to  work  and  roll  cigarettes  at  the 
same  time. 

Rolling  cigarettes  is  a  difficult  art  and  many  of 
our  college  students  labor  years  to  perfect  it. 
When  a  college  boy  comes  home  able  to  roll  a  ciga- 
rette with  one  hand,  you  can  see  about  all  that  he 
has  picked  up  in  college  on  the  ends  of  his  fingers. 

159 


CIGAKETTES 

When  a  young  man  smokes  cigarettes  to  excess, 
he  becomes  so  permeated  with  poison  that  microbes 
cannot  live  in  him  and  he  has  to  linger  along  for 
years  with  a  kiln  dried  brain  that  rattles  in  his 
head  like  a  dried  pea  in  a  wash-boiler. 

Cigarettes  are  used  mostly  by  boys,  loafers,  col- 
lege students,  artists  and  literary  men.  However, 
the  loafer  cannot  become  a  literary  man  by  smok- 
ing cigarettes.  Literary  men  smoke  cigarettes  to 
show  off  the  strength  of  their  brains  just  as  pugi- 
lists beat  up  street  car  conductors  to  exhibit  their 
muscles. 

There  is  a  belief  that  any  young  man  who  spends 
all  his  time  smoking  cigarettes  will  eventually  be- 
come a  fool.  This  is  not  true.  The  cigarettes  in 
this  case  are  a  result,  not  a  cause. 

Some  women  smoke  cigarettes.  They  are  of 
two  kinds.  When  you  see  a  woman  smoking  ciga- 
rettes you  can  be  quite  sure  that  either  she  is  too 
good  to  associate  with  you,  or  you  are  too  good 
to  associate  with  her. 


160 


MOTOR  BOATS 

A  MOTOR  boat  is  a  small,  frail  vessel,  af- 
flicted with  a  gasoline  engine  and  an 
amateur  mechanic.  When  the  engine  is 
in  full  cry  and  the  mechanic  is  making  threats,  the 
boat  sometimes  develops  a  speed  of  50  miles  an 
hour  in  its  efforts  to  get  away  from  both  of  them. 

Motor  boats  are  used  by  men  fond  of  machin- 
ery, and  keep  them  from  taking  more  valuable 
things  apart  and  repairing  them.  When  a  man 
has  a  motor  boat  and  two  bushels  of  tools  he  is 
perfectly  happy  and  will  not  stay  at  home  Sun- 
days and  attempt  to  dissect  the  plumbing  or  re- 
pair the  furnace  or  tune  the  piano  or  revive  the 
door  bell.  A  very  small  boat  with  an  engine  in 
it  two  sizes  larger  than  an  alarm  clock  will  keep 
two  strong  men  busy  all  summer,  and  will  even 
prevent  them  from  adding  to  the  horrors  of  a 
presidential  campaign  by  talking  politics — for  mo- 
tor boats  take  precedence  over  politics  or  the  cost 
of  living  when  two  boat  owners  are  conversing. 

A  motor  boat  is  very  simple,  unlike  an  automo- 
bile, and  can  be  started  very  readily  by  putting  in 
a  new  spark  plug,  adjusting  the  vibrator,  replac- 
ing the  carburetor,  repairing  the  feed  pipe,  tight- 

161 


MOTOR  BOATS 

ening  the  propeller,  renewing  the  batteries  and 
straining  the  water  out  of  the  gasoline.  When 
this  is  all  done  the  boat  will  start  immediately  and 
proceed  with  the  utmost  cheerfulness  to  a  point 
11%  miles  from  civilization,  at  which  place  it  will 
go  into  a  state  of  coma  for  the  rest  of  the  day. 
The  man  who  tries  to  navigate  any  motor  boat,  no 
matter  how  expensive,  without  an  auxiliary  en- 
gine in  the  shape  of  a  stout  oar,  is  not  wise. 

Some  motor  boats  are  very  powerful  and  have 
engines  of  400  mule  power,  not  only  in  strength, 
but  in  noise  and  stubbornness.  It  takes  as  long 
to  start  these  engines  as  it  takes  the  United  States 
Senate  to  get  heated  up  over  a  bribery  investiga- 
tion, but  when  they  are  once  in  action  the  boat  pre- 
sents an  inspiring  sight  as  it  leaps  from  wave  to 
wave,  throwing  vast  sheets  of  water  on  either  side 
and  sinking  gloriously  two  miles  from  help. 
These  boats  are  not  comfortable,  having  only  room 
for  a  mechanic  and  an  accident  policy,  but  they 
are  the  only  craft  made  which  are  able  to  over- 
take a  porpoise  and  butt  him  from  the  rear. 

Motor  boating  is  a  fascinating  exercise,  and 
when  the  engine  can  be  persuaded  to  do  its  share 
of  the  work,  is  also  a  pleasant  recreation. 


182 


FISHING 

FISHING  is  one  of  man's  most  fascinating 
methods  of  letting  time  go  on  as  it  darn 
pleases.  A  man  who  fishes  is  a  man  who 
has  two  hours  or  two  weeks  which  he  doesn't  need. 
So  he  throws  them  in  the  river. 

The  object  in  fishing  is  to  catch  something. 
This  is  not  hard  to  do.  The  man  who  cannot  catch 
malaria  while  fishing  or  thunder  after  returning 
home  is  no  fisherman  at  all. 

However,  the  most  satisfactory  thing  to  catch 
while  fishing  is  fish.  This  is  because  a  fish  is  the 
most  difficult  thing  to  catch.  Only  a  man  with 
great  patience  can  catch  a  fish.  He  must  wait  un- 
til the  fish  gets  ready  to  be  caught  like  a  merchant 
who  doesn't  advertise. 

An  impatient  man  would  dam  a  river,  pump  out 
the  water,  and  catch  his  fish  by  the  tail.  But  this 
is  not  considered  good  ethics  in  fishing. 

Impatient  men  have  no  business  fishing,  but 
should  stick  to  business. 

Some  people  regard  fishing  as  an  exercise. 
These  people  take  $37  worth  of  implements  and 
travel  400  miles  north  where  they  spend  ten  days 
wading  streams  and  trying  to  drop  an  artificial  fly 

163 


FISHING 

into  the  mouth  of  a  trout  at  forty  rods  with  a  pat- 
ent rod. 

Others  regard  fishing  as  a  rest.  Men  of  this 
kind  take  a  day  off,  hire  a  boat  and  sit  in  it  all  day 
long  under  the  shade  of  a  straw  hat,  soaking  angle- 
worms in  the  river  and  soaking  themselves  in  pre- 
servatives until  the  mosquitoes  fly  sideways  as 
they  leave  them  with  a  full  cargo. 

Still  others  regard  fishing  as  an  excuse.  It  is 
useless  to  offer  a  fisherman  of  this  sort  a  job  be- 
cause he  is  already  as  busy  as  he  wants  to  be. 

Fishing  develops  patience  and  encourages  the 
fisher  to  think  grand  and  solemn  thoughts  when 
the  mosquitoes  are  not  bothering  him.  However, 
it  is  not  wise  to  fish  much  before  the  age  of  forty. 
Men  who  begin  to  fish  early  develop  too  much  pa- 
tience. Some  of  them  are  still  waiting,  at  eighty, 
for  good  luck  to  come  along  and  haul  them  to  pros- 
perity by  one  leg. 

Catching  fish  is  largely  a  matter  of  luck.  But 
telling  about  them  is  a  matter  of  imagination. 
The  best  fisher  can  hardly  make  a  living  at  it,  but  a 
man  who  is  skillful  at  explaining  why  he  didn't 
land  a  7-foot  muskallonge  is  laying  the  founda- 
tion of  a  successful  career  as  a  press  agent. 


164 


VACATION 

VACATION  is  one  of  the  few  gambles  that 
aren't  prohibited  by  law.  You  put  in  all 
the  money  you  have  saved  and  draw  a  two 
weeks '  rest  out  of  a  grab  bag.  If  you  win  you  get 
a  nice  room  next  to  the  breeze  on  a  shady  farm 
with  a  milch  cow.  If  you  lose  you  get  shivers  at  a 
northern  beach,  canned  goods  in  a  country  board- 
ing house  or  a  camping  party  in  a  wet  spell.  But 
whatever  it  is,  it  is  your  vacation. 

Vacation  consists  of  11  months  of  saving,  two 
weeks  of  scramble,  and  two  weeks  of  rest.  Some 
people  rest  by  chasing  a  deer  through  100  miles  of 
underbrush  and  some  by  climbing  a  mountain  that- 
only  has  a  hand-hold  every  100  feet.  Others  rest 
by  playing  lawn  tennis  until  they  are  parboiled  to  a 
deep  red,  and  still  others  consider  turning  a  heavy 
motor  boat  engine  over  by  hand  in  a  broiling  sun 
to  be  a  relaxation  that  will  send  them  home  feeling 
like  new  men. 

Some  people  are  very  hard  on  their  bank  ac- 
counts during  vacation,  and  go  to  expensive  sea- 
side resorts  where  the  poor  things  get  no  rest  at 
all.  A  man  may  return  from  one  of  these  places 
looking  the  picture  of  health,  but  with  a  pocket 

165 


VACATION 

book  which  is  so  emaciated  that  a  two-cent  stamp 
would  make  a  bulge  in  it. 

Some  people  are  so  rich  that  they  can  take  a 
month's  vacation  and  others  are  so  rich  that  they 
rest  51  weeks  in  the  year  and  spend  the  other  week 
at  home  watching  a  hired  man  cut  coupons.  But 
two  weeks'  vacation  is  as  much  as  the  ordinary 
man  can  stand. 

Ministers  usually  get  a  month's  vacation,  but 
this  is  because  their  congregations  need  the  rest. 

School  teachers  have  three  months'  vacation 
without  pay.  When  a  laboring  man  gets  this  kind 
of  a  vacation  he  calls  it  a  lock-out  and  wants  to 
know  what  the  government  is  going  to  do  about  it. 

People  choose  their  vacations  too  carelessly  and 
place  too  much  faith  in  railroad  folders  and  rumor. 
The  best  way  to  choose  a  place  in  which  to  gorge 
one 's  self  with  rest  is  to  pick  it  out  the  year  before 
and  encourage  a  friend  to  go  to  it.  If  he  comes 
back  still  a  friend  you  can  risk  it. 

Of  course,  some  men  suffer  severely  during  their 
vacations  and  get  even  by  recommending  the  place 
of  torture  to  their  friends,  but  fortunately  these 
villains  are  very  few. 

Vacations  are  valuable  because  they  give  a  man 
a  change.  Government  employes  should  always 
spend  their  vacations  at  hard  labor. 


166 


PICNICS 

A  PICNIC  is  a  charity  affair  gotten  up  for 
the  entertainment  of  certain  varieties  of 
bugs.  It  consists  of  a  basket  of  dinner,  a 
hammock,  and  a  rain  storm.  The  dinner  is  shared 
between  the  owner  and  seven  kinds  of  ants.  The 
hammock  is  shared  by  the  owner  and  several  mos- 
quitoes. The  thunder  storm  is  used  as  terminal 
facilities  for  the  picnic  and  by  the  unwilling  vic- 
tims of  said  picnic  as  an  excuse  to  get  home  as 
soon  as  the  last  piece  of  pie  has  been  consumed  or 
has  been  scraped  off  of  some  small  boy. 

A  picnic  is  composed  of  people  and  lunch  in 
equal  parts.  It  is  usually  several  days  in  incubat- 
ing and  coming  to  a  head.  It  takes  three  days  to 
prepare  the  lunch  for  a  picnic  of  the  first  grade, 
three  hours  to  find  a  satisfactory  spot  on  which  to 
lay  it  out,  and  thirty  minutes  to  make  it  look  like 
the  contents  of  a  pie  wagon  that  has  been  struck  by 
an  automobile.  As  in  the  bringing  up  of  children, 
women  do  most  of  the  work  at  a  picnic.  They  pre- 
pare the  lunch,  pack  the  baskets  and  persuade  the 
men  to  come.  There  is  also  one  woman  in  each 
picnic  who  clears  up  the  remains  and  washes  the 
dishes.  She  is  indispensable  and  the  picnic  can- 
not exist  without  her.  Some  towns  have  gone  pic- 

167 


PICNICS 

nicless  for  years  because  their  last  willing  picnic 
worker  has  retired. 

The  men  also  work  at  picnics.  They  carry  the 
lunch  baskets  and  put  up  the  hammocks  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  cause  as  much  excitement  as  possible. 
The  groans  of  the  men  who  are  performing  these 
duties  can  usually  be  heard  at  a  great  distance. 

Picnics  begin  to  appear  sporadically  in  June  and 
reach  their  greatest  severity  in  August.  When 
the  epidemic  is  at  its  height  a  healthy  person  may 
have  as  many  as  six  picnics  a  week  and  yet  sur- 
vive them.  A  man  who  has  been  afflicted  with  pic- 
nics can  be  distinguished  by  the  way  one  shoulder 
droops  from  carrying  the  ice  cream  freezer,  and 
also  by  his  habit  of  looking  nervously  about  him 
before  sitting  down.  No  man  who  has  ever  heard 
the  terrible  words :  '  *  Henry,  get  right  up  off  that 
cake,"  can  help  doing  this  ever  after. 

Picnics  are  complicated  by  baseball,  swimming, 
apple  stealing,  moonlight  chaperones  and  children, 
of  which  the  latter  are  by  far  the  most  serious. 
Four  children  are  as  much  as  an  ordinary  picnic 
can  have  without  exploding  before  three  o'clock. 

Since  the  automobile  has  come  into  general  use, 
the  picnic  has  been  much  less  severe,  because  the 
victims  are  able  to  come  out  of  it  in  about  one 
quarter  of  the  time  formerly  required. 


168 


FUN 

FUN  is  enjoyment  with  pepper  and  other 
spices  in  it.  It  is  a  sort  of  a  class  B 
pleasure.  A  man  with  a  skyscraper  brow 
can  live  happily  all  his  life  on  such  class  A  pleas- 
ures as  literature,  music  and  art.  But  the  ordi- 
nary human  has  to  have  a  little  fun  now  and  then 
or  he  will  sour  and  become  a  social  nuisance. 

There  are  several  million  varieties  of  fun  and 
most  of  these  are  harder  on  the  system  than  work. 
If  men  had  to  lie  in  icy  swamps  all  day  long  shoot- 
ing ducks  for  $2  a  day  the  industrial  commission 
would  look  into  their  case.  A  man  will  spend  two 
days  and  $200  trying  to  shin  up  a  15,000  foot 
mountain  peak,  hanging  on  by  his  ears  and  heels 
in  the  steep  places  because  it  is  fun.  But  if  the 
elevator  breaks  in  his  office  building  and  he  has  to 
climb  four  stories  he  will  sue  the  management. 

Fun  is  almost  anything  that  you  don't  have  to 
do.  Baseball  is  the  most  fun  in  the  world  until  a 
man  gets  so  good  that  he  can  command  a  salary 
for  playing  it.  Afterwards  it  is  work  and  when  it 
rains  and  he  doesn't  have  to  play,  he  weeps  with 
joy. 

Driving  an  automobile  is  glorious  fun  and  some 
men  spend  $5,000  a  year  for  the  privilege.  Other 

169 


FUN 

men  look  pained  and  down-trodden  when  you  neg- 
lect to  give  them  50  cents  in  addition  to  the  legal 
fare  for  running  a  car  four  blocks  on  a  nice  spring 
day. 

Some  men  can  get  a  great  deal  of  fun  out  of  a 
checker  game  and  other  men  can  enjoy  themselves 
thoroughly  while  chasing  the  weight  of  a  fizzed 
star  through  a  three-pound  book  of  logarithms. 
Other  men  cannot  enjoy  themselves  except  by 
watching  two  stout  prize-fighters  reducing  each 
other's  faces  to  Hamburg  steaks.  Some  men  get 
their  fun  by  trying  to  drown  themselves  in  the 
Niagara  rapids  in  a  motor  boat,  while  a  great 
many  more  spend  happy  years  trying  to  drown 
themselves  out  of  a  bottle. 

Men's  tastes  in  fun  have  determined  the  prog- 
ress of  the  world.  War  was  once  a  leading  amuse- 
ment and  watching  Christian  martyrs  fry  at  the 
stake  was  considered  a  noble  pastime.  "We  are 
more  particular  now  about  our  fun,  but  little  un- 
derpaid chorus  girls  must  still  amuse  us  while  they 
last,  and  when  a  fun  maker  turns  a  gasoline  tank 
into  a  60  horse  power  car  and  juggernauts  through 
the  city  at  a  mile  a  minute,  no  one  has  the  heart  to 
lynch  him  because  he  is  merely  amusing  himself. 

When  we  can  get  our  fun  out  of  turning  rascals 
out  of  office,  swatting  the  selfish,  and  inflicting 
awful  surprises  on  the  suffering  in  the  shape  of 
good  fellowship,  the  driver  of  the  millennium  will 
wake  from  his  long  sleep  and  crank  up  his  machine. 

170 


PROFANITY 

PROFANITY  is  Biblical  language  with  a  re- 
verse gear,  and  is  used  to  back  the  owner 
out  of  the  straight  and  narrow  path. 

Profanity  is  convenient  in  many  ways.  In  case 
of  anger  it  is  supposed  to  prevent  the  peeved  per- 
son from  blowing  out  through  the  seams.  After 
a  man  has  emitted  about  10  cubic  feet  of  high  ten- 
sion profanity  his  pounded  thumb  feels  better  and 
he  no  longer  desires  to  throw  the  hammer  through 
a  $10  window  pane. 

Profanity  is  also  used  industrially  by  steamboat 
mates  and  automobile  owners.  It  is  next  to  im- 
possible to  operate  a  steamboat  without  a  full  head 
of  profanity.  In  the  case  of  the  automobile,  pro- 
fanity does  the  machine  no  good,  but  enables  the 
owner  to  endure  the  sport. 

Pilots  of  large-eared  and  patient  mules  use 
swear  words  as  a  sort  of  self-starter.  A  mule  who 
will  allow  a  fire  to  be  built  underneath  him  without 
taking  any  interest  in  it,  will  wake  up  and  walk  off 
all  by  himself  after  his  owner  has  pelted  him  with 
a  bushel  of  polygonal  swear  words. 

Profanity  is  also  used  by  poor  talkers  to  fill  in 
blanks  in  their  conversation  when  their  brains  are 
missing  fire.  By  the  aid  of  profanity,  a  man  with 

171 


PROFANITY 

a  one  candle  power  brain  can  talk  steadily  for  a 
long  time,  slipping  in  one  cuss  word  to  two  ordi- 
nary words  and  thus  making  his  supply  last 
longer. 

Profanity  is  mostly  descriptive  and  is  very 
vivid.  Some  of  it  is  such  accurate  description  that 
after  a  man  has  finished  using  it,  the  air  smells  like 
an  old-fashioned  eight  day  match.  Profanity  is 
also  very  irritating  to  the  hearer.  After  a  man 
has  listened  to  a  few  minutes  of  profanity  pro- 
duced by  another  man,  he  often  takes  the  producer 
by  the  neck  and  cleans  off  half  a  block  of  sidewalk 
with  him.  It  takes  a  very  intelligent  man  to  start 
a  quarrel  without  the  aid  of  profanity,  but  with  its 
help  any  one  can  cook  up  a  fight  in  three  minutes. 

Profanity  is  not  refined,  and  is  regarded  with 
horror  by  the  best  people,  except  when  it  is  heard 
on  the  stage.  If  the  hired  girl  were  to  say 
"damn"  in  the  average  family,  she  would  be  fired 
forthwith,  but  this  word  is  always  greeted  with 
great  applause  in  a  play,  and  is  a  great  boon  to  the 
weary  author,  who  would  otherwise  have  to  think 
up  something  original  at  that  point. 

Profanity  is  not  a  hard  art  to  acquire.  It  can  be 
learned  in  the  home  with  the  aid  of  a  telephone  or 
a  weak-chested  furnace  in  a  very  few  lessons. 


172 


MORE   OR   LESS   BUNK 


PROMISES 

A  PROMISE  is  something  that  is  harder  to 
keep  than  fresh  milk  in  a  thunderstorm. 
Promises  do  not  spoil,  like  milk,  how- 
ever. They  break.  A  butterfly 's  wing  is  a  tough 
and  durable  affair  beside  a  promise.  A  man  who 
can  break  100  glass  balls  in  succession  is  proud  of 
the  record,  but  many  a  statesman  has  broken  11,- 
000  promises  the  first  week  in  office  and  without 
any  effort  either. 

Promises  are  legal  tender  for  all  kinds  of  favors 
and  goods,  but  they  are  not  guaranteed  by  the  gov- 
ernment, and  are  very  precarious  security.  Some 
men  turn  out  an  extraordinary  high  grade  of 
promises  which  will  be  redeemed  over  the  counter 
without  question  at  any  time.  Other  men  issue 
promises  faster  than  a  wildcat  investment  com- 
pany can  turn  out  bonds,  and  when  the  proud 
holder  of  one  of  these  promises  attempts  to  cash  it 
he  discovers  that  it  is  Confederate  money. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  business  which  are  car- 
ried on  almost  entirely  by  promises — love  and  poli- 
tics. When  a  man  is  in  love  he  thanks  kindly 
Providence  for  inventing  the  promise.  It  is  noth- 
ing for  a  young  man  to  give  a  young  woman  a 
beautiful  home,  a  private  yacht,  a  limousine,  a  va- 

175 


PROMISES 

cation  in  Europe,  flowers  every  day  until  she  dies 
of  old  age,  and  unlimited  torrents  of  affection — all 
in  promises — in  a  single  evening.  And  it  is  noth- 
ing for  the  same  young  lady,  two  years  after  mar- 
riage, fo  spend  three  hours  trying  to  trade  all  of 
these  promises  for  $1.25  in  United  States  money,  in 
order  to  buy  a  new  hat  and  spend  the  balance  on 
enervating  luxuries. 

The  candidate  is  even  more  talented  on  putting 
out  vast  issues  of  very  attractive  promises.  Many 
a  voter  has  gotten  up  early  and  has  run  all  the  way 
to  the  polls  to  help  elect  a  noble  character  who  has 
promised  to  enforce  the  laws,  uplift  the  adminis- 
tration, reduce  taxes,  increase  prosperity,  double 
crop  returns,  protect  the  public  health,  increase 
the  number  of  potatoes  in  a  bushel,  make  the  street 
car  company  call  for  its  customers,  and  prolong 
the  life  of  shoes.  But  later  he  finds  that  these 
promises  cannot  be  fulfilled,  owing  to  the  over- 
worked necessities  by  satisfying  Bill,  Mike,  Steve, 
Hank,  Toni,  and  876  other  citizens,  each  of  whom 
holds  a  promise  good  for  one  public  job. 

People  should  be  as  careful  in  accepting  prom- 
ises as  they  are  in  taking  notes.  They  should  step 
around  to  the  nearest  information  bureau  and  look 
up  the  promissor's  ability  to  pay. 


176 


LOVE 

THE  poets  have  been  trying  to  tell  us  what 
love  is  for  4,000  years,  but  they  have  made 
such  a  hash  of  it  that  even  to-day  thou- 
sands of  people  can't  tell  the  difference  between 
love  and  a  business  opportunity  until  after  they 
are  married. 

Love  is  a  peculiarly  squashy  condition  of  the 
head  produced  by  an  appetite  in  the  heart.  It  is  a 
grand  thing  for  the  heart,  enlarging  it  to  many 
times  its  former  capacity,  but  what  it  does  to  the 
mind  is  mournful  to  contemplate.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  love,  we  see  $9  a  week  clerks  buying  $5 
bunches  of  violets,  strong  and  fearless  young  ath- 
letes weeping  great  pearly  tears,  because  the  letter 
carrier  didn't  produce  a  pink  note,  and  well  edu- 
cated young  women  regarding  Apollo,  Shake- 
speare and  Daniel  Webster  as  mere  trash,  when 
compared  with  the  magnificent  young  football 
players  or  necktie  salesmen  who  call  at  their 
homes  each  evening. 

Love  blinds  the  eyes,  warps  the  judgment,  spoils 
the  taste,  increases  the  capacity  for  happiness, 
takes  the  sting  out  of  misfortune,  softens  the  dis- 
position, makes  hard  work  worth  while  and  fills  the 
land  with  happy  and  often  crowded  homes. 

177 


LOVE 

Love  is  an  infernally,  ridiculously  and  painfully 
magnificent  thing.  It  is  a  1,000,000  volt  shock  of 
personal  magnetism  against  where  there  is  no  in- 
sulation. It  preys  upon  the  old  and  the  young 
alike.  It  attacks  the  statuesque  young  society 
princess  and  reduces  her  from  an  iceberg  to  an 
armful  of  soft  words  in  three  weeks.  It  steals 
into  the  bony  frame  of  the  hardened  old  skinflint, 
who  has  just  ejected  nineteen  starving  families 
from  his  tenement  houses,  and  transforms  him  into 
a  slave  of  the  barber,  the  manicure  specialist  and 
the  florist  in  less  time  than  it  would  take  a  thou- 
sand dollar  bill  to  earn  two  bits  in  interest. 

Love  can  be  cured,  but  it  isn't  worth  while.  It 
is  too  fascinating  in  its  terrible  progress.  The 
best  treatment  is  to  allay  it  and  mitigate  it  by 
means  of  marriage.  There  is  as  much  love  after 
marriage  as  before,  but  it  leaves  the  brain  where  it 
has  been  messing  things  up  and  goes  down  into  the 
heart  where  it  belongs, 

Love  has  remodeled  nations,  revised  history, 
overthrown  kings  and  champions  and  has  made 
literature  worth  reading.  It  is  said  that  love 
makes  the  world  go  'round,  but  it  does  more  than 
that.  It  makes  the  world  go  'round  and  'round 
and  'round  like  another  well  known  intoxicant. 
But  it  is  a  far  more  divine  dizziness. 


178 


SUPERSTITION 

SUPERSTITION  is  the  process  of  getting 
frightened  at  something  which  isn't.  The 
world  is  not  as  scary  now  as  it  once  was. 
A  thousand  years  ago  a  dark  day  would  scare  the 
hardiest  sinner  into  repentance,  and  the  man  who 
could  obtain  advance  information  regarding  a 
comet  or  an  eclipse  could  sway  whole  nations  by 
cashing  in  on  their  fears.  People  have  become 
much  wiser  of  late  and  there  are  now  only  about 
11,000  general  superstitions  extant. 

One  of  the  most  popular  superstitions  is  Friday. 
Friday  has  a  bad  name  with  millions  of  people 
who  decline  to  get  married  or  begin  journeys  or 
launch  ships  or  pay  bills  on  Friday. 

Thirteen  is  also  a  terrible  number  to  the  super- 
stitious. Many  a  man  has  excused  himself  from 
a  dinner  party  of  thirteen  on  the  plea  of  illness,  be- 
cause he  believed  that  if  he  stayed  one  of  the  party 
would  surely  die  before  the  end  of  the  year.  This 
is  a  very  valuable  superstition  because  it  leaves 
more  to  eat  for  the  remaining  twelve. 

It  is  also  considered  very  dangerous  in  Africa, 
Tahiti,  Madagascar  and  some  parts  of  America,  to 
walk  under  a  ladder,  to  break  a  mirror,  to  raise  an 

179 


SUPERSTITION 

umbrella  in  a  house  and  to  dream  of  a  barking  dog 
three  times  in  succession.  Many  a  man  who  will 
drive  an  automobile  around  a  mile  track  all  day  at 
the  rate  of  60  miles  an  hour  in  great  content,  would 
shiver  with  dread  if  he  saw  a  black  cat  on  the  track 
ahead — whereas  common  sense  would  compel  the 
cat  to  do  all  the  shivering. 

A  great  many  people  still  adhere  to  the  supersti- 
tion that  to  revise  the  tariff  downward  produces 
bad  crops.  This  belief  is  rapidly  dying  out  how- 
ever. 

Superstitious  people  lead  sad  and  anxious  lives 
but  are  relieved  by  the  knowledge  that  there  is  an 
antidote  for  every  bad  sign.  For  instance,  if  two 
firm  friends,  while  walking,  pass  on  either  side  of 
an  obstruction,  the  words  " bread  and  butter"  pro- 
nounced with  great  reverence  will  prevent  them 
from  quarreling  and  beating  each  other  up  with 
clubs.  Many  people  go  through  life  depending 
happily  upon  the  saving  power  of  antidotes  for 
bad  omens.  Those  people  whose  memories  are  so 
bad  that  they  can't  remember  either  the  omens  or 
the  antidotes  are  usually  not  superstitious. 

Non-superstitious  people  often  point  to  the  fact 
that  America  was  discovered  on  Friday.  How- 
ever, this  was  extremely  unlucky  for  Mexico,  the 
buffalo,  and  the  Hessian  troops  in  the  Revolution. 


180 


ELOQUENCE 

ELOQUENCE  is  the  art  of  arranging  words 
to  look  like  pictures.  When  a  man  is  elo- 
quent, he  is  as  dangerous  as  if  he  were 
armed  with  a  large  club.  He  captures  states  and 
cities  by  firing  large  reverberating  words  instead 
of  cannon  balls  at  them,  and  turns  murderers  and 
chicken  thieves  loose  upon  an  unfortunate  world 
by  making  strong  men  weep  until  the  jury  box  has 
to  be  bailed  out  as  he  tells  how  badly  the  prisoner's 
family  will  feel  if  he  isn't  given  another  crack  at 
society. 

An  eloquent  man  can  say  * '  Good  Morning  "  in  a 
way  that  would  sprout  orange  trees  in  Dakota  and 
can  cause  an  audience  to  rise  to  its  feet  and  shout 
wildly  by  describing  the  principles  of  dry  farming. 
All  over  the  world  men  willingly  endure  the  hor- 
rors of  banquets  in  order  to  listen  afterward  to 
speakers  who  can  say  nothing  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  make  it  sound  like  a  celestial  choir  swinging  its 
feet  on  a  double  rainbow. 

After  a  man  has  been  eloquent  for  a  few  years, 
he  usually  goes  into  politics  and  runs  for  office. 
Dense  throngs  turn  out  to  hear  him  speak  and  as 
he  describes  the  nobility  of  character  which  leads 
his  party  to  ignore  its  own  interests  and  produce 

181 


ELOQUENCE 

bumper  crops  when  it  is  out  of  power,  the  welkin 
rings  like  a  fire  bell  and  his  friends  beg  him  to  get 
off  the  legislative  ticket  and  run  for  president. 

After  the  same  man  has  served  the  people  for  a 
few  years,  he  comes  back  for  reelection  and  takes 
out  a  stock  of  words  which  sound  like  the  battle 
cry  of  freedom  with  a  smile  of  confidence.  But 
at  this  point,  he  usually  runs  up  against  some- 
thing that  is  seventeen  times  more  eloquent  than 
he  is.  It  is  his  record.  His  record  doesn't  get  on 
a  platform  and  wave  its  arms.  It  keeps  quiet  in 
fourteen  languages,  but  oh,  how  eloquent  it  is !  A 
good  many  times  a  quiet  little  record  only  a  few 
lines  long  will  not  only  out-argue  its  owner,  but 
will  chase  him  out  of  town. 

In  the  old  days  when  a  convention  would  look  up 
a  record  in  the  lumber  room  and  do  all  the  talking 
itself,  said  records  didn't  count  so  much.  But 
nowadays,  unless  a  statesman  can  get  his  record  to 
talk  on  his  side,  he  usually  retires,  owing  to  the 
pressure  of  private  business,  and  becomes  an  em- 
bittered man. 


182 


LUCK 

LUCK  is  the  power,  much  more  mysterious 
than  the  attraction  of  gravitation,  which 
gives  you  the  good  things  you  don't  de- 
serve, and  keeps  you  working  for  everything  you 
get,  when  it  deserts  you  and  chums  up  with  your 
hated  rival. 

Luck  is  not  controlled  by  a  trust  and  cannot  be 
bought  in  sealed  paper  packages.  Men  are  born 
with  luck,  just  as  they  are  born  with  red  hair 
and  Jacksonian  democracy — though  they  can  lose 
the  luck,  while  the  others  are  permanent.  With 
luck  a  man  can  drop  a  diamond  studded  watch 
into  the  river  and  can  stun  a  catfish  with  a  clam 
full  of  pearls  in  its  stomach.  With  luck  a  man 
can  have  $10  worth  of  chickens  stolen  and  can 
trace  the  thief  by  means  of  a  pocketbook  full  of  $20 
bills  which  the  latter  has  dropped  in  the  hen  house. 
With  luck  a  man  can  have  his  political  career  made 
instead  of  ruined  by  being  elected  Vice-President 
— up  to  date  this  is  luck's  most  wonderful  achieve- 
ment. 

With  luck,  a  man  who  can't  earn  $2  a  day  with 
his  muscles,  or  twenty-five  cents  a  day  with  his 
brain,  can  sit  down  before  a  little  table  with  funny 
marks  on  it  and  can  make  $500  in  a  night  by  guess- 
ing where  the  little  ball  is  going  to  land.  Without 

183 


LUCK 

luck  he  can  sit  at  the  same  table  and  leave  his  shoes 
and  overcoat  behind  when  he  goes  home. 

Luck  has  made  as  many  millionaires  as  industry 
has — though  it  doesn't  get  the  credit.  And  it  has 
made  ten  times  as  many  paupers.  Luck  is  a  fine 
thing  to  have  in  prosperity  when  you  don't  need  it. 
It  will  snuggle  up  to  a  rich  man  like  a  cat  to  a 
saucer  of  cream,  but  when  a  man  has  learned  to 
think  of  luck  as  an  old  college  chum  and  to  depend 
on  it  to  pull  through  a  big  business  deal,  it  is  gen- 
erally somewhere  else  admiring  the  scenery.  The 
world  is  full  of  men  who  are  trying  to  persuade 
luck  to  earn  their  living,  and  you  can  detect  most 
of  them  by  the  way  they  fail  to  pay  back  what  they 
borrow  of  you.  Luck  loves  nothing  better  than 
to  lead  a  good  friend  into  a  grandstand  and  pick 
out  a  pony  for  him  which  is  going  to  win  20  to  1  in 
the  next  race.  But  when  the  same  friend  tries  to 
lead  luck  into  the  same  stand  and  pick  out  another 
which  will  win  him  enough  to  pay  his  room  rent  on 
Saturday,  it  couldn't  balk  harder  if  it  were  being 
abducted.  Luck  positively  refuses  to  work  by  the 
day. 

Wall  Street,  the  race  track,  and  the  little  back 
rooms  presided  over  by  deft-fingered  men  with 
frantic  vests  are  jammed  with  pale,  sad  people  who 
are  waiting  for  their  old  friend  luck  to  keep  its  en- 
gagement with  them  and  who  can't  imagine  why  it 
is  late.  But  it  always  is. 


184 


HYPOCRISY 

ORIGINALLY  hypocrisy  was  the  science 
of  preaching  one  thing  loudly  and  doing 
another  in  an  eminently  stealthy  man- 
ner. There  were  many  hypocrites  in  the  world 
1900  years  ago,  and  they  were  all  flourishing  until 
one  day  they  got  put  together  and  described  by  a 
mysterious  itinerant  preacher  with  such  consum- 
ing eloquence  that  they  have  been  unpopular  ever 
since. 

Hypocrisy  in  late  years  has  been  borrowed  as  a 
weapon  by  the  opponents  of  reform  and  its  defini- 
tion has  been  changed.  Nowadays  a  hypocrite  is  a 
man  who  demands  that  something  shall  be  changed 
for  the  better. 

It  is  very  easy  to  prove  that  such  a  man  is  a 
hypocrite.  If  he  demands  that  the  rascals  shall  be 
thrown  out  he  is  a  "  holier  than  thou"  sort  of  a 
chap.  And  yet  it  can  be  easily  proven  that  three 
years  ago  he  took  a  drink.  This  makes  him  a 
hypocrite  and  very  naturally  proves  that  people 
should  have  nothing  to  do  with  his  reforms. 

The  word  " hypocrite'*  is  now  the  chief  defense 
of  the  man  who  doesn't  want  moral  conditions  im- 
proved. He  will  admit  that  they  could  be  im- 
proved and  ought  to  be  improved,  but  he  insists 

185 


HYPOCKISY 

that  the  movement  shall  be  led  by  a  perfect  man. 
If  he  isn't  perfect  he  is  a  hypocrite  for  denouncing 
vice.  Thus  vice  reigns  supreme,  slightly  rumpled, 
but  wholly  vindicated,  and  the  men  who  cry  out 
against  vice  have  the  bony  finger  of  public  scorn 
bored  through  them  for  their  shocking  hypocrisy. 

According  to  the  new  dispensation,  every  man 
who  tries  to  live  correctly  is  a  hypocrite  because 
sometimes  he  fails.  Virtue  is  hypocrisy  because  it 
isn't  as  good  as  it  tries  to  be.  The  man  who  yells 
for  the  enforcement  of  the  laws  is  a  despicable 
creature  because,  most  likely,  he  is  breaking  some 
laws  himself. 

Therefore,  we  have  only  one  virtue  left — vice. 
Vice  is  honest,  frank  and  unashamed  and  should  be 
honored  for  it.  And  the  lawbreaker  who  calmly 
proclaims  the  fact  and  then  buys  the  jury  in  a 
broad-minded  and  public  manner,  paying  spot  cash 
and  not  cheating  anybody  is  our  only  true  noble- 
man. 

Hypocrisy  is  the  curse  of  the  nation,  and  will  be 
until  we  learn  not  to  be  afraid  of  it. 


186 


CABBAGES 

THE  cabbage  is  a  lonely  and  humble  vege- 
table, which  grows  fluently  and  can  be 
raised  by  a  mere  amateur  without  the  use 
of  agricultural  reports  or  imported  soil.    It  con- 
sists of  a  long,  thick  root,  which  is  used  as  a  lunch 
club  by  cut-worms  and  a  head  which  varies  in  size 
from  5%  to  8%.    Contrary  to  conditions  in  other 
heads,  the  more  swelled  the  cabbage  head  becomes 
and  the  softer  it  is  in  the  middle,  the  more  useful 
it  is  to  the  human  race. 

Cabbages  are  raised  by  sowing  a  quantity  of 
seed  in  a  moist,  warm  place.  When  the  infant 
cabbage  has  amassed  a  couple  of  leaves,  it  is  taken 
out  of  the  nursery  and  planted  in  the  garden.  One 
man  can  successfully  bring  up  100  cabbages  in  his 
spare  moments.  The  plant  grows  slowly  and 
when  it  reaches  maturity,  can  be  harvested  by  a 
quick  jerk.  It  is  then  ready  to  be  transformed  into 
food. 

To  prepare  a  cabbage  for  the  table  in  the  most 
successful  manner,  first  lease  a  forty  acre  farm  a 
little  distance  from  town.  Then  set  a  cook  stove 
in  the  middle  of  the  field  and  turn  the  wind  gently 
away  from  the  town.  Select  a  cabbage  with  good 
frontal  development,  and  place  it  in  a  kettle  of 

187 


CABBAGES 

water.  Then  light  the  fire  and  retire  swiftly.  At 
the  end  of  two  hours,  eat  a  small  piece  of  two- 
horse-power  cheese,  in  order  to  neutralize  the  at- 
mosphere around  the  cook  stove  and  remove  the 
cabbage.  Wring  the  smell  out  of  it,  season  to 
taste  and  devour  it.  You  will  find  it  delicious. 
While  being  cooked,  the  cabbage  defends  itself 
much  as  does  the  celebrated  Polish  cat,  but  when 
it  is  finally  overcome,  it  is  sweet  and  toothsome. 

In  the  fall  a  fine  dish  can  be  made  by  chopping 
a  hundred  heads  of  cabbage  into  shoe-strings,  and 
burying  the  whole  in  a  barrel.  During  the  winter, 
batches  of  this  preparation  can  be  fried  from  time 
to  time  in  a  skillet  and  the  result  is  that  sublime 
delicacy  known  as  "  sauerkraut. "  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  advertise  to  the  neighborhood  that  you  are 
going  to  have  kraut  for  dinner. 

The  cabbage  head  is  a  great  lesson  to  man.  It 
does  not  swear,  nor  boast,  nor  stuff  itself  full  of 
unsavory  facts.  There  has  been  some  talk  of  sub- 
stituting cabbage  heads  in  many  department  posi- 
tions in  Washington,  on  the  theory  that  they  could 
do  the  work  perfectly  and  could  be  eaten  in  their 
old  age,  instead  of  pensioned,  but  nothing  has  come 
of  this  as  yet.  Reforms  move  wondrous  slowly  in 
this  country. 


188 


KINGS 

KINGS  were  invented  shortly  after  the 
earth  cooled  off.  From  that  time  to  this, 
most  countries  have  had  kings,  but  the 
'disease  is  now  steadily  decreasing  in  severity, 
and  is  well  under  control. 

Originally,  a  king  was  a  man  who  was  so  handy 
with  a  sword  or  a  large  stone  club,  that  no  one 
dreamed  of  disobeying  him.  The  early  kings 
were  great  fighters.  A  king  usually  led  his  army 
into  battle  and  hewed  a  neat  and  workmanlike  path 
through  the  opposition  with  his  battle  ax,  until  he 
met  some  other  candidate  with  a  better  back  hand 
stroke  than  his.  Then  he  died  and  was  buried  with 
his  hands  folded  piously,  and  his  toes  pointing 
Heavenward,  while  the  man  with  the  improved 
chop  had  a  new  sweat  band  put  in  the  crown,  and 
wore  it  until  he  got  fat  and  neglected  training, 
about  which  time  he  usually  met  some  rising  young 
axman  and  was  filed  away  in  a  handsome  sarcopha- 
gus for  future  generations  to  gaze  at.  There  was 
really  little  difference  between  the  early  king  busi- 
ness and  the  prize-fighting  game,  except  that  the 
former  was  more  unhealthy. 

When  a  king  succeeded  in  dying  in  bed  with  his 
boots  off  and  his  head  on,  he  passed  the  crown  on 
to  his  oldest  son.  This  has  always  been  one  of  the 

189 


KINGS 

weaknesses  of  the  system,  owing  to  the  well-known 
inclinations  of  the  sons  of  successful  fathers  to 
live  on  their  dads  and  neglect  their  opportunities. 
Many  a  strong  king,  who  had  inspired  upwards  of 
11,000  obituaries  by  his  own  unaided  efforts,  has 
passed  on  the  job  of  slicing  up  the  opposition  to  a 
pimply  son,  who  was  an  expert  dancer,  but  could 
not  carve  a  beefsteak,  let  alone  a  foe. 

As  the  world  grew  more  civilized,  however,  it 
amused  itself  with  politics,  instead  of  fighting. 
This  is  a  very  difficult  game  and  of  late  kings 
have  not  been  allowed  to  interfere  in  it  very  much. 
Nowadays  a  king  is  expected  to  wear  plenty  of  uni- 
forms, to  open  new  churches  and  colleges,  to  give 
free  parades  whenever  possible,  and  to  provide 
plenty  of  descendants,  but  he  is  not  allowed  to  get 
gay  with  the  statute  books  any  more.  In  fact,  he 
has  been  denatured  and  mitigated  until  he  is  now 
scarcely  more  exciting  than  a  president's  aide-de- 
camp. 

Kings  are  very  expensive,  but  are  usually  quiet 
and  well  mannered,  and  old-fashioned  countries, 
like  England,  Spain  and  Italy,  enjoy  them  just  as 
they  do  their  cathedrals  and  art  galleries.  A  king 
in  a  circus  would  draw  well  in  this  country,  and  as 
large  numbers  of  kings  are  losing  their  positions 
each  year,  we  may  yet  be  able  to  stock  the  zoos  of 
this  country  with  well  preserved  specimens  of 
these  queer  creatures. 


190 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


RY  Gr  1 
WALT  DISNEY  SW. 


